The Pursuit of Happiness

'I hope the next time you come back to Maine, you won't be fleeing something'.

I laughed. 'But it's such a good place to slam the door on the rest of the country'.

'Then why on earth do you have to go overseas?'

'Because, thanks to Mr Winchell, I find myself abroad at home. So I'm now going to find out whether I'm at home abroad'.

I slept most of the way to New York. I was still feeling depleted. And I was still in a certain amount of pain - thanks to the way that my supply of painkillers had ended up in the fire. I hadn't dared asked Dr Bolduck for a new prescription, so I was now using aspirin to deaden the discomfort. Every time I saw myself sitting on that sofa with the bottle of pills and the whiskey, I shuddered. Because for the two days before, the decision to take my life had seemed so logical, so reasonable... to the point where I actually felt rather elated by the prospect of terminating everything. But now, as the train snaked its way down the eastern seaboard, I couldn't help but think: if that phone call hadn't come, this is a day I wouldn't have seen. It wasn't even a particularly nice day - as it was overcast and gloomy. But it was a day. I was still here to look at it. I was grateful for that.

I arrived at Penn Station around nine that night. I had a porter help me with my bags across the street to the Hotel Pennsylvania. They had a vacancy. I paid for one night, with an option to extend for a second. I didn't want to be in this town for long. Upstairs in my room, I stared out at the midtown skyline, then closed the blinds to block out its audacious glow. I unpacked, undressed, climbed into bed and was asleep within minutes. I woke at eight, feeling rested for the first time in months. I had a bath, I got dressed, I called Joel Eberts. He told me to come right over. On the way downtown in a taxi, I read the New York Times. On page eleven, there was a small story at the bottom of the page about the suicide yesterday afternoon of a Hollywood actor named Max Monroe, aged forty-six, known for his roles in a variety of RKO and Republic B-movies. He was found dead yesterday afternoon at his apartment in West Hollywood from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

According to his agent, Mr Monroe had been suffering from depression for the past two years - ever since work opportunities dried up after he was branded a hostile witness by the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities.

I put down the paper, unable to finish the story. I glanced out the window of the taxi. New York was as frantic and self-obsessed as ever. Everyone rushing somewhere. Everyone so preoccupied, so busy that they probably weren't even aware of the deeds being perpetrated in their name - the careers crushed, the trusts betrayed, the lives destroyed. That was the thing about the blacklist - unless it touched you personally, you could carry on as if nothing dark was happening around you. I couldn't fathom how we had allowed ourselves to be cowed by such patriotic demagogues. All I knew was: I had to leave. To put an ocean between myself and my country. Until the madness ended.

Joel Eberts greeted me with a paternal hug and a considerable amount of news. He'd booked me passage on the SS Corinthia, sailing that night, docking seven days later in Le Havre. He'd secured me a single inside cabin: nothing fancy, but at least I'd have the place to myself. He had all the forms ready for my passport.

'It's the same deal as your brother - you run up to the passport office at Rockefeller Center, you hand in all the forms and a check for twelve dollars, you show them your transatlantic boat ticket, and they should have a passport for you by five this evening. But you better hurry. The deadline for one-day processing is ten thirty. That now gives you a half-hour to get there, tops'.

Forms in hand, I grabbed a cab. It raced uptown. I made the passport office at ten twenty-five. The clerk vetted all the forms, and told me to be back at the office by close of business today. As I came out of the office, I noticed that I was opposite the Saturday Night/Sunday Morning building. I didn't give it a second glance. I just hailed a cab and headed downtown again.

Joel Eberts had offered to bring me to lunch at a little Italian place near his office. We sat down. We ordered. The boss - a friend of Joel's - insisted on bringing us each a glass of Spumante. We toasted my journey to foreign parts.

'Have you thought about what you are going to do over there?'

'No. I don't even know where I'll end up... though, initially, I'll probably head to Paris'.

'You will write me as soon as you've gotten settled somewhere?'

'I'll wire you. Because I'll also need to set up bank transfer facilities'.

'No problem. I'll handle all that'.

'And you will give me a bill for all that you've been doing on my behalf?'

'Call it a friendly favor'.

'I would really rather pay you properly, Joel'.

'That's one of the many things I like about you, Sara - you're completely ethical'.

'Look where it's gotten me'.

He paused for a moment, abstractedly rubbing the rim of his glass with his stubby index finger. 'Do you mind if I ask you something?'

'Yes - I still think about him a lot'.

He smiled. 'Are my thoughts that transparent?' he asked.

'No - I am'.

'As I told you on the phone, there must be fifteen, twenty letters from him, stacked up in my office. He also called me around four times. Begging me to tell him where you were'.

'What did you say?'

'What you told me to say: that you had left New York and were living in an undisclosed location. Then he asked if I was forwarding on his letters. I said that you instructed me to hold all personal mail until you returned'.

'Did he leave you alone after that?'

Another pause. 'Do you really want to know this?' I nodded. 'He came to see me personally. Around six weeks ago. He sat in the chair opposite my desk, and...'

'Yes?'

'He started to cry'.

'I don't want to hear this'.

'Fine', he said, reaching for the menu. 'Shall we order?'

'What did he say?'

'You said you don't want to hear this...'

'You're right', I said, reaching for the menu. 'I don't. Tell me what he said'.

Joel put down the menu. 'He told me you were the best thing that ever happened to him; the center of his life. And he tried to explain...'

'How he killed my brother?'

'You know that's not true'.

'All right, all right - he didn't physically end his life. But he certainly got the ball rolling in that direction. He pointed the finger. He handed Eric to the Feds on a plate. How can I forgive that? How?'

Joel drummed his fingers on the table. 'Forgiveness is the hardest thing in life... and the most necessary. But it's still the hardest'.

'That's easy for you to say'.

'You're right. It is. Eric wasn't my brother'.

'Exactly', I said, reaching for the menu. 'And yes, I will have the veal piccata'.

'Good choice', Joel said, motioning towards the waiter. We ordered. Then Joel reached into his pocket. He pulled out an envelope, and handed it to me. I saw that it was postmarked Brunswick, Me.

'Here's the letter you sent me', he said.

'Oh', I said, suddenly uneasy. 'You didn't read it, did you?'

'It's unopened, Sara - at your request. As long as it's legal, I always follow my clients' instructions'.

'Thank you', I said, tucking the letter into my bag. He looked at me carefully. I sensed that he knew what was in that letter - and how close I had skirted the precipice.

'I hope you'll get some rest during the transatlantic crossing', he said. 'You look tired, Sara'.

'I am tired. And yes, I do plan to spend most of the next seven days on the SS Corinthia fast asleep. If they allow me on the boat, that is'.

'Why wouldn't they?'

'You can't board a transatlantic ship without a passport, can you? And if the Department of State stopped Eric from getting a passport...'

'Don't worry - they'll issue you a passport'.

Joel was right. At five that afternoon, the clerk at the Rockefeller Center passport office handed me a spanking new green travel document, valid for five years. My lawyer accompanied me to the office, just in case my application had run into difficulties. But no questions were asked, no objections raised. The clerk even wished me 'Bon Voyage'.

We managed to find a taxi amidst the rush-hour madness on Fifth Avenue. I had just under forty-five minutes to make it to Pier 76, where the SS Corinthia was docked and setting sail that night at seven thirty. I stared out of the cab window as night fell on Manhattan. I suddenly wanted to jump out, run to the nearest phone booth, and call Jack. But what would I have said?

'Do you believe things happen for a reason?' I heard myself saying.

Joel looked at me with care. 'You're talking to the original Jewish agnostic, Sara. I don't believe in some Almighty plan, or even that dumb thing called "destiny". I believe you should try to live your life ethically, and otherwise hope for the best. What else can we do?'

'I wish I knew, Joel. I wish...'

'What?'

Silence.

'If only Eric had gotten his passport...'

'Sara...'

'Or if he'd gone to Mexico the next day... If he hadn't looked back in that taxi on the way to the airport, and seen the midtown skyline... If only...'

'Don't play the if only game, Sara. You can never win it'.

We inched our way west on 50th Street. We reached Twelfth Avenue. We turned south towards 48th Street. We pulled into the gates of Pier 76. We got out of the cab. The driver handed my suitcase and typewriter to a porter. He lurked nearby. I suddenly found myself clutching on to Joel's coat sleeves.

'What am I doing here?' I asked.

'Getting on that boat'.

'I'm scared'.

'You're leaving the country for the first time. It's only natural to be anxious'.

'I'm making the wrong call'.

'You can always turn around and come back. It's not a life sentence, you know'.

'Tell me I'm crazy'.

He kissed me gently on the head - like a father giving his daughter his blessing.

'Bon voyage, Sara. Wire me when you find your footing'.

The porter cleared his throat, hinting that it was time to get aboard. I hugged Joel. Gently, he detached my hands from his sleeves.

'What will I do over there?' I said.

'At the very worst, you'll survive. Which is what we all do'.

I turned and followed the porter up the gangplank. Just before we reached the main deck, I spun around. The taxi carrying Joel Eberts was pulling out of the gate. I kept my eyes at street level. To look up would have meant paying a final mournful tribute to the Manhattan skyline. I didn't want a long goodbye. I just wanted to leave town as quietly as possible.

Thirteen

SEVEN DAYS AFTER slinking out of New York Harbor, the SS Corinthia docked in Le Havre. I stepped on to French soil, my equilibrium still wobbly after all that time at sea. I immediately took a taxi to the railway station, and caught the express to Paris.

A week later, I checked out of my hotel on the rue de Sevres and moved into a small atelier on rue Cassette in the Sixth. I lived there for the next four years. Initially I took French lessons and squandered the days in cinemas and brasseries. Then I found a job in a small Franco-American advertising agency on the Champs-Elysees. Through colleagues at work, I was parachuted into the center of Paris's burgeoning American community - for this was the time when the weakness of the franc, the luxury of the GI bill, and the ongoing witch hunt back home meant that the French capital was heaving with expats. Initially, I resisted mingling with my compatriots. Inevitably, though, I found myself getting more and more tangled in the American community. Especially after I met Mort Goodman - the executive editor of the Paris Herald-Tribune - at a party.

'I'm sure I know your name from somewhere', he said after we were introduced.

'Did you ever work in New York?' I asked.

'Sure', he said. 'I was with Collier's for three years before getting the job over here'.

'Well, I used to write a bit for Saturday/Sunday'.

'Oh hell, you're that Sara Smythe', he said, then insisted on taking me out to lunch the next day. By the end of that lunch, he offered me the chance to contribute the occasional feature to the paper. I kept on churning out copy for the advertising agency, but started having my by-line appear every few weeks in the Herald-Tribune. Three months after I started getting published in that paper, Mort Goodman took me out for another lunch and asked if I'd like to try my hand at a column.

'Traditionally, we've always had a resident American-in-Paris write a weekly piece on life in the capital, local color, la mode du moment... whatever. Now the guy who's been doing it for the past two years has just got himself fired for missing four deadlines in a row, due to his little love affair with the bottle. Which means the position is open. Interested?'

Of course, I said yes. My first column appeared on November seventh, 1952... three days after Eisenhower beat Stevenson for the presidency. That election - and McCarthy's accelerating hearings in Washington - hardened my conviction that the best place for me at the moment was right here in Paris. And I liked the place. No, I wasn't one of those dumb romantics who swooned every time I smelled the aroma of a freshly baked baguette in my local boulangerie. Paris to me was a complex, contradictory entity - simultaneously rude and gracious, erudite and banal. Like anyone interesting, it was deeply contradictory. Its epic grandeur - its sense of self-importance - meant that Paris saw itself as a unique entity within which you, the resident, were privileged to dwell. In this sense, it reminded me of New York, as it was totally indifferent to its citizenry. The Americans I met who hated Paris - and railed against its arrogance - were usually people from smaller, more intimate cities like Boston or San Francisco, where the local beau monde stroked each other's ego, and anyone in a position of power or authority felt as if they counted. Parisian arrogance meant that nobody was important, nobody counted. It's what I loved most about the city. As an expat, you didn't try to be ambitious in Paris. You tried to live well. You always felt as if you were an outsider... but, after everything that had happened in New York, I embraced that etranger role with relief.

And Paris, in turn, embraced me. The column gave me a profile there. But so too, I discovered, did the circumstances surrounding my expatriatism. I never mentioned anything about my brother. Much to my surprise, however, many members of the American community knew about Eric's death, just as they had also heard how I'd been dropped from Saturday/Sunday. I avoided talking about such matters - because I didn't like the idea of using the blacklist as a form of social currency... and also because, according to Smythe family values, there was something deeply gauche about seeking sympathy for any personal misfortune. But I still found myself being made a member of an eclectic, raffish community. Having lived a rather singular life in New York (and having never been the most gregarious of people), it was liberating to find myself now plunged into something of a social whirl. I was out on the town at least five nights a week. I drank with the likes of Irwin Shaw and James Baldwin and Richard Wright and many of the other American writers who were living in Paris. I heard Boris Vian sing songs in some St Germain cave, and actually attended a reading given by Camus at a St Germain bookshop. I became a habitue of late-night jazz haunts. I indulged in long lunches with friends at Le Balzar (my favorite brasserie). I developed a taste for Ricard and casual affairs. Paris treated me well.

I was kept in regular contact with things New York, courtesy of Joel Eberts. We wrote each other once a week - generally to discuss financial matters (when it became clear that I was going to be staying in Paris for a while, he found someone to sublet my apartment), and also for Joel to forward any mail that came my way.

In June of 1953, his weekly update ended with the following paragraph:

There is only one personal letter in the batch of mail I'm enclosing this week. I know who it's from - because it was hand-delivered to me by its author: Meg Malone. She waltzed in here a few days ago, unannounced, insisting I tell her where she could find you. All I said was that you had left the country. Then she handed me the enclosed envelope, and insisted that I forward it to you. I told her what I told her brother: that you had specifically requested that any mail from Jack be held by me. 'I'm not Jack', she countered - and lawyer that I am, I had to concede she had an argument there. She said nothing else - except that, if I didn't forward the letter, I'd be her sworn enemy for life. The fact that she said this with a smile made me like her... and also made me honor her request. So here's the letter. Read it if you wish. Throw it away if you don't want to. The choice is your own.

Timing is everything in life. This letter arrived at the wrong moment. It was the night after the Rosenbergs had been executed at Sing-Sing for allegedly selling atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. Like just about every American I knew in Paris (even those who usually voted Republican), I was horrified by this despotic act - and one which, yet again, made me despise the forces which had destroyed my brother. For the first time in my life, I had actually done something vaguely political - attending a candlelight vigil in front of our Embassy (along with around three thousand Parisians, led by notables like Sartre and de Beauvoir), signing a petition condemning this act of state murder, and feeling completely ineffectual and furious when the word came through (around two that morning, Paris time) that the executions had gone ahead. The next day, Meg Malone's letter arrived courtesy of Joel. My first thought was: tear it up... I don't need to hear any apologias for Jack Malone. Instead, I ripped open the envelope and read:

Dear Sara,

I don't know where you are, or what you're thinking. But I do know that Jack loves you more than anything, and has been in something approaching constant agony since you disappeared. He told me everything that happened. I was horrified by what he had done. I can fully understand your grief and fury. But... yes, here comes the but... he is as much a victim of the insanity that has gripped our country as your brother. This is not to condone his choice, or to excuse an action which many would interpret as self-serving. Faced with an appalling choice, he panicked. In doing so, he knows he killed your love for him. He has been trying to make contact with you for nearly a year, but has failed. Your lawyer informed him that you were refusing to read his letters. Once again, I cannot blame you for feeling that way. And, believe me, the only reason I am writing to you now is because Jack is currently suffering from something akin to a nervous breakdown - which is related entirely to the overwhelming guilt he feels about naming your brother and losing you.

What can I say, Sara? Except this: I know how deeply you once loved him. I don't ask for a miraculous reconciliation. All I ask is that, somehow, you find a way to forgive him - and to communicate your forgiveness to him. I think it would mean an enormous amount to him. He is now a deeply unhappy man. He needs your help to find his way back to himself. I hope you can put the tragedy you suffered to one side, and write him.

Yours,

Meg Malone

I was suddenly angry. All the pain I had put away suddenly came roaring back. I rolled a piece of paper into my Remington. I typed:

Dear Meg,

I think it was George Orwell once who wrote that all cliches are true. With that in mind, here's my response to your plea on behalf of your brother:

Jack has made his own bed. He can lie in it. Alone.

Yours

Sara Smythe

I pulled the letter out of the machine. Within a minute I had signed it, folded it, shoved it into an envelope, addressed it to Meg, and affixed the appropriate stamps and air-mail sticker to its front.

Two weeks after I mailed that letter, a telegram arrived for me at the offices of the Herald-Tribune. It contained four words:

Shame on you.

Meg

As soon as I read it, I balled up the telegram and threw it away. If Meg's reply was designed to make me feel awful, it succeeded. So much so that I ended up going out with a new friend from the Herald-Tribune - Isabel van Arnsdale - and drinking too much vin rouge, and telling her the entire damn story. Isabel was the paper's chief sub-editor - a stocky Chicago woman in her late forties. She'd moved over to Paris in '47, right after her third marriage collapsed. She was known to be a consummate journalistic pro, and someone who could put away a bottle of whiskey, yet still seem sober.

'Jesus Christ', she said when I finished telling her the tale of the past year. 'Correction: Jesus-fucking-Christ'.

'Yeah - I could use a spell of boredom', I said, sounding deeply tipsy.

'No - what you could use is a life without encumbrance'.

'There's no such thing'.

'True - but take it from a veteran of three crap marriages: there are ways of insulating yourself against further pain'.

'What's the secret?'

'Don't fall in love'.

'I've only done that once'.

'And, from what you said, it ruined your life'.

'Perhaps. But...'

'Let me guess: when it was right, it was... I dunno... Transcendental? Incomparable? Peerless? Am I getting warm?'

'I just loved him. That's all'.

'And now?'

'Now I wish he'd leave me alone'.

'What you mean is: you wish you could stop thinking about him'.

'Yes. That is what I mean. I still hate him. I still love him'.

'Do you want to forgive him?'

'Yes I do. But I can't'.

'There's your answer, Sara. From where I sit, it's the right answer. Most women would never have had anything to do with him after the way he initially disappeared on you. To then betray you and your brother...'

'You're right, you're right'.

'Your response to his sister's letter was the proper one. It's finished, over, kaput. Don't look back. He's a bad piece of work'.

I nodded.

'Anyway, as you already know, this town is crawling with interesting guys. Not to mention a lot of uninteresting guys who are still baisable, if you catch my drift. Go out, have some more adventures. Believe me, in a couple of months, you'll have gotten over him'.

I wanted to believe that. And to accelerate this distancing process, I continued my series of cavalier flings. No, I didn't turn into a femme fatale, with three guys on the go at once. I was an old-fashioned serial monogamist. I met someone. I took up with them for a little while. I let the thing run its course. When it started getting serious, or tiresome, or simply routine, I'd jump ship. I became an expert at disentangling myself from a relationship with the minimum of fuss. Men were useful for companionship, for occasional acts of tenderness, and for the ephemeral pleasures of sex. Anytime I found someone getting too dependent on me, I'd end it quickly. Anytime a guy started trying to change me - to wonder out loud what on earth I was doing living in a small atelier, and why I favored Colette-style pants suits over more 'feminine' apparel - they'd be politely shown the door. In the four years I resided in Paris, I had three marriage proposals - all of which I turned down. None of the men in question was wildly inappropriate. On the contrary, the first was a successful merchant banker; the second, a lecturer in literature at the Sorbonne; and the third, a would-be novelist, living on Daddy's trust fund. All of them were, in their own way, thoroughly charming and intelligent and emotionally stable. But each of them was on the lookout for a wife. That was a role I wasn't interested in ever playing again.

The years in Paris evaporated far too quickly. On December thirty-first, 1954, I stood on a balcony overlooking the avenue Georges V in the company of Isabel van Arnsdale, and assorted other Herald-Tribune reprobates. As car horns sounded - and a fireworks display illuminated the winter sky - I hoisted my glass towards Isabel and said, 'Here's to my last year in Paris'.

'Stop talking crap', she said.

'It's not crap: it's the truth. By this time next year, I want to be on my way back to the States'.

'But you've got a great life here'.

'Don't I know it'.

'Then why the hell throw it all away?'

'Because I'm not a professional expatriate. Because I miss baseball, and bagels, and Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King, and Gitlitz's delicatessen, and showers that work, and a grocery store that delivers, and speaking my own language, and...'

'Him?'

'No goddamn way'.

'You promise?'

'When have you last heard me speak about him?'

'Can't remember'.

'There you go'.

'Then when are you going to do something stupid, like fall in love again?'

'Hang on - you told me that the only way to get through life was by never falling in love'.

'Jesus Christ, you really don't think I'd expect anyone to follow that advice?'

But the thing was: I had followed her counsel. Not intentionally. Rather, because, after Jack, no one I met ever triggered that wonderfully strange, deranged, dangerous surge of... what do you call it? Desire? Delirium? Passion? Completeness? Stupidity? Self-delusion?

Now I knew something else: I couldn't be with him, and I couldn't get over him. Time may have numbed the ache - but like any anaesthetic, it didn't heal the wound. I kept waiting for the day when I would wake up and Jack would have finally fled my thoughts. That morning had yet to arrive. An ongoing thought had started to unsettle me: say I never came to terms with this loss? Say it was always there? Say it defined me?

When I articulated this fear to Isabel, she laughed. 'Honey, loss is an essential component of life. In many ways, c'est notre destin. And yes, there are certain things you never really get over. But what's wrong with that?'

'It's so damn painful... that's what's wrong with it'.

'But living is painful... n'est-ce pas?'

'Cut the existential crap, Isabel'.

'I promise you this - the moment you begin to accept that you're not going to get over it... you might just get over it'.

I kept that thought in mind during the next twelve months - when I drifted into a brief fling with a Danish jazz bassist, and wrote my weekly column, and spent long afternoons at the Cinematheque Francaise, and (if the weather was clement) read for an hour each morning on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens, and celebrated my thirty-third birthday by giving notice at the Herald-Tribune, and writing Joel Eberts that the sublet of my apartment should end by December thirty-first, 1955. Because I was coming home.

And on January tenth, 1956, I found myself back at Pier 76 on West 48th Street, stepping off the SS Corinthia. Joel Eberts was there to meet me.

'You haven't aged one damn bit, counselor', I said after giving him a hug. 'What's your secret?'

'Constant litigation. But hey, you look wonderful too'.

'But older'.

'I'd say, "exceedingly elegant"'.

'That's a synonym for "older"'.

We took a taxi uptown to my apartment. As per my instructions, he'd arranged with the janitor to have it repainted when the tenants moved out before Christmas. It still reeked of turpentine and fresh emulsion - but the whitewash of the walls was a cheering antidote to the ashen January morning.

'Only a crazy person decides to return to New York in the thick of winter', Joel said.

'I like murk'.

'You must have been a Russian in a former life'.

'Or maybe I'm just someone who has always responded well to gloom'.

'What a lot of dreck you talk. You're a survivor, kiddo. And a canny one at that. If you don't believe me, check out the pile of bank and investment statements I've left in a folder on your kitchen table. You hardly touched a cent of your capital while you were in France. And the rent from the sublet built up rather nicely. Also: your stockbroker is one sharp operator. He's managed to add about thirty per cent value to both the divorce settlement fund and Eric's insurance payout. So if you don't want to work for the next decade...'

'Work is something I can't do without', I said.

'I concur. But know this - financially speaking, you're damn comfortable'.

'What's in here?' I asked, kicking a cardboard box that was by the couch.

'It's all of the accumulated mail I didn't forward to you over the years. I had it sent up yesterday'.

'But you forwarded me just about everything, except...'

'That's right. His letters'.

'I told you to throw them out'.

'I decided that there was no harm keeping them until your return... just in case you decided you did want to read them, after all'.

'I don't want to read them'.

'Well, your building gets its garbage collected once a day, so you can throw them out whenever you like'.

'Have you ever heard from Jack or his sister again?'

'Nope. Have you?'

I'd never told Joel about my reply to Meg's letter. I wasn't going to now.

'Never', I said.

'He must have taken the hint. Anyway, it's all history now. Just like Joe McCarthy. I tell you, I'm no conventional patriot - but on that day in fifty-four when the Senate censured the bastard, I thought: unlike a lot of other places, this country has the reassuring habit of finally admitting that it got something wrong'.

'It's just too bad they didn't censure him three years earlier'.

'I know. Your brother was a great man'.

'No - he was simply a good man. Too good. Had he been less good, he'd still be alive. That's the hardest thing about coming back to Manhattan - knowing that every time I walk by the Ansonia or the Hampshire House...'

'I'm sure that, even after four years, it still hurts like hell'.

'Losing your brother never gets easier'.

'And losing Jack?'

I shrugged. 'Ancient history'.

He studied my face carefully. I wondered if he saw I was lying.

'Well that's something, I guess', he said.

I changed the subject. Quickly.

'How about letting me buy us lunch at Gitlitz's?' I said. 'I haven't had a pastrami on rye and a celery soda in five years'.

'That's because the French know nothing about food'.

I hoisted the box of Jack's letters. We left the apartment. Once we were outside, I tossed the box into the back of a garbage truck that was emptying cans on West 77th Street. Joel's eyes showed disapproval, but he said nothing. As the jaws of the truck closed around the box, I wondered: why did you do that? But I covered my remorse by linking my arm through Joel's, and saying, 'Let's eat'.

Gitlitz's hadn't changed in the years I had been away. Nor had most of the Upper West Side. I slotted back into Manhattan life with thankful ease. The bumpy readjustment I had been dreading never materialized. I looked up old friends. I went to Broadway shows and Friday matinees at the New York Philharmonic and the occasional evening at the Metropolitan Opera. I became a habitue once again of the Met and the Frick and the 42nd Street branch of the Public Library, and my two local fleapit movie houses: the Beacon and the Loew's 84th Street. And every other week, I punched out a 'Letter from New York' - which was then dispatched, courtesy of Western Union, to the offices of the Paris Herald-Tribune. This bi-monthly column was Mort Goodman's farewell present to me.

'If I can't get you to stay and write for me in Paris, then I better get you writing for me from New York'.

So now I was a foreign correspondent. Only the country I was covering was my own.

'In the four years I was loitering with intent on the rue Cassette (I wrote in a column, datemarked March 20th, 1956), something curious happened to Americans: after all the years of economic depression and wartime rationing, they woke up one morning to discover that they now lived in an affluent society. And for the first time since the Roaring Twenties, they're engaged on a massive spending spree. Only unlike the hedonistic twenties, this oh-so-sensible Eisenhower era is centered around the home - a happy, reasonably affluent God-fearing place, where there are two cars in every garage, a brand new Amana refrigerator in the kitchen, a Philco TV in the living room, a subscription to the Reader's Digest, and where grace is said before every TV dinner. What? You expatriates haven't heard of a TV dinner? Well, just when you thought American cuisine couldn't get more bland...'

That column (written in one of my flippant H.L. Mencken-esque moods) caused my phone to ring off the hook for a few days - as it was picked up by the Paris correspondent of the very conservative San Francisco Chronicle, who used large quotes from it in a piece he wrote about the sort of anti-American rubbish that was being printed in an allegedly respectable paper like the Paris Herald-Tribune. Before I knew it, I was back in Walter Winchell's column:

News Flash: Sara Smythe, one-time yuckster for Saturday Night/Sunday Morning and recent professional American-in-Paris, is back in Gotham City... but not too happily. According to our spies, she's churning out a column featuring a lot of cheap cracks about Our Way of Life for all those bitter expats who choose to live away from these great shores. Memo to Miss Smythe: if you don't like it here, why not try Moscow?

Four years earlier, Winchell's smear would have killed all potential employment prospects in New York. How times had changed - for now, I received a series of calls from editors whom I used to know around town during the late forties and early fifties, asking if I'd like to have lunch and talk things over.

'But, according to Winchell', I told Imogen Woods, my former editor at Saturday/Sunday (now the number two at Harper's), 'I'm still the Emma Goldman of West Seventy-Seventh Street'.

'Honey', Imogen said, digging into her Biltmore Hotel cobb salad, and simultaneously signaling to the waiter for more drinks, 'Walter Winchell is yesterday's chopped liver. In fact, you should be pleased Winchell took another swing at you. Because it's how I found out you were back in New York'.

'I was surprised to get your call', I said carefully.

'I was really glad you agreed to meet me. Because... and I'm being totally honest here... I was ashamed of myself when Saturday/Sunday let you go. I should have stuck up for you. I should have insisted that someone else give you the news. But I was scared. Terrified of losing my lousy little job. And I hated myself for being such a coward. But I still went along with them. And that will always weigh on my conscience'.

'Don't let it'.

'It will. And when I read about your brother's death...'

I cut her off before she could say anything more.

'We're here now', I said. 'And we're talking. That's what counts'.

By the end of that lunch, I was the new Harper's film critic. The phone continued to ring at home. The book editor of the New York Times offered me reviewing work. So too did his counterpart at the New Republic. And a commissioning editor at Cosmopolitan arranged a lunch meeting, telling me she'd love to revive the 'Real Life' column - 'only tailored to today's sophisticated fifties woman'.

I accepted the reviewing work. I turned down the Cosmopolitan offer, on the grounds that my erstwhile column was erstwhile. But when the editor asked if I'd like to do a lucrative six-month stint as the magazine's agony aunt - I accepted on the spot. Because I was about the last person in the world who should be giving out sensible advice.

The Cosmopolitan editor - Alison Finney - took me to lunch at the Stork Club. While we were eating, Winchell came in. The Stork Club had always been his haunt, his outer office - and though everyone in New York now considered Winchell's power to be on the wane (as Imogen Woods had told me), he still commanded the most highly visible of all corner tables, furnished with its very own telephone. Alison nudged me and said, 'There's your greatest fan'. I shrugged. We finished our lunch. Alison excused herself and disappeared off to the Ladies'. Without thinking about what I was doing, I suddenly stood up and walked towards Winchell's table. He was correcting some copy, so he didn't see me approach.

'Mr Winchell?' I said pleasantly.

He looked up and quickly scrutinized my face. When it was clear I wasn't worth his attention, he picked up his pencil and glanced back down at his copy.

'Do I know you, young lady?' he said, a hint of gruffness in his voice.

'Actually you do', I said. 'But you know my brother even better'.

'Oh yeah? What's his name?'

'Eric Smythe'.

I could tell that the name didn't register, as he pursed his lips for a second, then continued making a correction.

'And how's Eric?' he asked.

'He's dead, Mr Winchell'

His pencil stopped for a moment, but his eyes remained fixed on his copy.

'Sorry to hear that', he said, sounding dismissive. 'My condolences'.

'You don't know who I'm talking about, do you?'

He said nothing. He continued to ignore me.

'"He may be Marty Manning's best scribe... but he used to be a Red." You wrote that about my brother, Mr Winchell. He lost his job after that, and ended up drinking himself to death. And you don't even remember his name'.

Winchell now glanced up - in the direction of the maitre d'.

'Sam', he shouted, pointing towards me. I continued speaking - the tone of my voice remaining conversational, strangely calm.

'And I bet you don't even remember me, do you? Even though you wrote about me just a week ago. I'm the Sara Smythe who, "according to our spies, is churning out a column featuring a lot of cheap cracks about Our Way of Life for all those bitter expats who choose to live away from these great shores. Memo to Miss Smythe: if you don't like it here, why not try Moscow?" Amazing how I can quote you chapter and verse, Mr Winchell'.

I felt a hand touch my arm. It was Sam, the maitre d'.

'Miss, would you mind going back to your table, please?' he asked.

'I was just leaving', I said, then turned back to Winchell. 'I just wanted to thank you for that recent mention, Mr Winchell. You wouldn't believe how many work offers I've had since you wrote about me. It just shows how much clout you still wield these days'.

Then I turned and headed back to my table. I said nothing to Alison about what had just happened when she returned from the Ladies'. I just suggested we order a final round of drinks. Alison agreed, and motioned to the waiter to freshen up our gimlets. Then she said, 'I bet you Winchell will now write something about you drinking too much at lunchtime'.

'That man can write whatever the hell he wants', I said. 'He can't hurt me anymore'.

But, after our one and only meeting, Walter Winchell never mentioned me in his column again.

Still, he really had been most useful on the professional front. I now had so much work on hand that I was pleased when the phone eventually went quiet again. It allowed me to get on with a large backlog of assignments. As always, I especially liked writing over the weekends - as it was a time when all my assorted editors weren't working, and when the vast majority of my friends were with their families. Sunday, in fact, was the one day I was assured of never getting a single call - which also made it the perfect day to work straight through without distraction.

Until the phone rang one Sunday morning in May at the early hour of nine. I reached for it.

'Sara?'

My pulse spiked. The phone shook in my hand. I had been wondering if this call would ever come. Now it had.

'Are you still there?' the voice asked.

A long pause. I wanted to hang up. I didn't.

'I'm here, Jack'.

Fourteen

'SO', HE SAID.

'So', I said.

'It's been a while'.

'Yes, it has'.

'How are you?'

'Fine. You?'

'Fine'.

He didn't sound fine. His voice was constricted, diminished. He was as nervous as I was. I heard street noises in the background.

'Where are you?' I asked.

'The corner of Seventy-Seventh and Broadway'.

Just like old times, I thought. Sneaking out of the house to phone me.

'Are you busy right now?' he asked.

'Kind of. I've got a deadline...'

'Oh. Too bad'.

'Sorry. It's just... well, work'.

'I understand', he said.

'How did you know I was back in town?'

'Walter Winchell'.

'My biggest admirer'.

He laughed - but the laugh quickly transformed into a cough. It took him a moment to bring it under control.

'Are you okay?' I asked

'Yeah', he said. 'I've got a little bronchial infection...'

'You shouldn't be standing on a cold street corner...'

'Well, it was my turn to take the baby out'.

That took a minute to sink in.

'You have a baby?' I asked.

'Yes. A daughter. Kate'.

'How old?'

'Seventeen months'.

'Congratulations', I said.

'Thanks', he said.

Another pause.

'Well...' he said. 'I just wanted to say hello'.

'Hello'.

'Sara... Meet me. Please'.

'Jack, I really don't think that's a good idea'.

'It's been four years'.

'I know, but...'

'Four years. That's a long time. I'm asking for nothing. I just want to see you. Half an hour of your time. No more'.

The phone started shaking again in my hand. I finally said, 'Gitlitz's in ten minutes'.

I hung up. I stood by the phone, unable to move. A baby. A daughter. Kate. No...

I wanted to flee. To pack a bag, and run to Penn Station, and catch the next train to...

Where?

Where could I run to this time? And even when I got there, he'd still be with me. As always.

I resisted the temptation of a steadying slug of Scotch. I forced myself into the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror. He'll think I look older... because I am older. I brushed my teeth. I quickly applied lipstick. I brushed my hair. I put down the brush. I gripped the sink, trying to steady myself. The urge to flee hit me again. I forced myself out of the bathroom. I put on my coat. I left the apartment. It had started to snow outside. I turned my collar up against the cold. I lowered my head. I marched the two blocks east to Gitlitz's.

When I entered the deli, the first thing I saw was a large blue baby carriage parked by a booth. I approached the booth. Jack was sitting there, both hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, staring down into its black surface. He didn't notice my initial arrival. This was fortunate - as it gave me a moment to absorb the shock of his appearance. He had lost a frightening amount of weight. His cheeks were hollow, his skin pasty. His hair had thinned. His eyes radiated fatigue. He did not look well. He had aged twenty years since I'd last seen him.

He glanced up. His eyes met mine. He attempted a smile, but he couldn't bring it off. I tried to smile back - but I could see that he registered my alarm at his condition. Instantly, he slid out of the booth and got to his feet. Standing up, the severity of his weight loss was even more disturbing. He reached for me with both hands, then thought better of it, and proffered his right one. I took it. It felt thin, emaciated. His eyes were locked on me. I found it difficult to meet his gaze.

'Hi', he said.

'Hi'.

'You look wonderful'.

I didn't supply the normal refrain - 'You do too' - because it was impossible to do so. Instead, I looked down into the baby carriage. Kate was asleep - a pretty, chubby baby in a snowsuit, covered by a thick plaid blanket. I reached into the carriage. I stroked one of her hands. Instinctively, it opened. Her tiny finger closed around my pinky. I stood there, trying to hold everything in check.

'She's beautiful', I said.

He stood by my side and looked down with me.

'Yes', he said, 'she is that'.

'Dorothy and you must be very pleased'.

He nodded, then motioned for me to take a seat. I gently disengaged my pinky from her hand. I slid into the booth. He sat down opposite me. He ordered more coffee. His hands curved around his cup again. We said nothing for a while. He finally spoke, his eyes focused on the table.

'This is... I was always wondering... I... I'm glad to see you, Sara'.

I didn't know what to say. So I stayed quiet.

'I don't blame you for hating me', he said.

'I don't hate you'.

'You did'.

'Maybe. For a while. But... hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time'.

'I know', he said. 'There have been periods over the last four years when I thought: will it ever get bearable?'

'Did it?'

'No. Never. I missed you every hour of every day'.

'I see'.

'And your grief for Eric. Did it ever... ?

'Dissipate? No. But I learned to live with it. Just as I learned to live with my grief for you'.

He looked up at me again.

'You grieved for me? he asked.

'Of course', I said. 'Endlessly'.

He stared at me with wounded bemusement.

'But... you refused to talk to me'.

'Yes. I did'.

'And you never read my letters?'

'That's right, they were never opened'.

'Then how can you say...'

'That I missed you all the time? Because I did. Because I loved you. More than anyone'.

He put his head in his hands. 'Then why the hell didn't you let me make contact, Sara?'

'Because... I couldn't. The grief was too big. I loved you so damn much that, when you betrayed Eric and me... when Eric died... I couldn't face you. What had happened was just too terrible. What made it even more terrible was... the fact that I understood why you had to do what you did. How you'd been put in an appalling situation; a situation in which it would have been easy to panic, to make a very wrong call. But that still... still... didn't lessen the repercussions of your choice. Because it took away the two people I valued most'.

The coffee arrived. He continued looking down at the table. He said, 'Do you know how often I've replayed that scene in my head?'

'What scene?' I asked.

'The scene where the two Feds were interviewing me in a conference room at Steele and Sherwood. The company's lawyer was with me. The interview had gone on all morning. I kept ducking and diving the question of the Communists I knew. For three hours, I stuck to my guns - and just named the people who had already named me. Finally, the Feds got frustrated - and asked to see the company lawyer in private. They must have been gone around twenty minutes. He came back alone. And said, "Jack: if you don't give them another name, you're going to be called in front of the Committee as a hostile witness. And your career at Steele and Sherwood will be finished."

'All I had to do was say no. That's all that was required. All right, I might have lost my job, but... I would have found a way of putting bread on the table. But they had me in a corner. And those Feds - they were so good at sniffing out your weaknesses. Jesus, did they play on mine. They knew all about us, of course - and they kept dropping hints about how, if I didn't cooperate, not only would I be fired from Steele and Sherwood, but word would probably get around about my complicated domestic arrangements. Not only would I be branded a pinko sympathizer, but Mr Flexible Morality. I remember exactly what one of the Feds told me: "Pal, if you were running two households in Paris, no one would give a shit. But in America, we operate according to a slightly harsher moral code: get found out, get fucked over. You'll be lucky to end up shining shoes somewhere."

'That's when I gave them Eric's name. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew I had killed everything. It was just a matter of time before you found out. And when Dorothy found out, she told me I was beneath contempt'.

'But didn't she understand that you did it for her and Charlie?'

'Oh, she got that all right. But she still saw it as another of my betrayals. She kicked me out for a while after that. Told me that she'd give me the divorce I'd always wanted... that I'd now be free to be with you...'

It took me a moment or two to speak.

'I didn't know', I said.

'If only you'd read my letters... if only you'd let me contact you... I kept thinking: this is the shittiest irony imaginable. And it's my own fault...'

He broke off, reached into his overcoat pocket, and fumbled around until he found a cigarette. He screwed it into a corner of his mouth. He picked up a book of matches off the table. He lit his cigarette with shaking hands. The light of the match cast his face in a gaunt glow. He looked so shrunken, so denuded, so defeated by everything. I saw myself throwing out his box of letters. Letters which he must have spent hours writing. As I spent hours writing him throughout the winter of '46... when I simply couldn't believe the wonderfully delirious love I felt for him. For four years, his letters sat gathering dust in Joel's office. Four years. I let them sit there. And then, on the day I returned to New York, I simply tossed them away - as a final act of reprisal. Why didn't I read them when he first sent them? Why did I have this need to punish him? A punishment which would now haunt me. Because I would always wonder: had I read those letters in the months after Eric's death, might I have understood? Might I have found a way of forgiving him? Might we have discovered a way back to each other?

'What happened after Dorothy threw you out?'

'I spent around six months on a fold-out couch in Meg's apartment'.

Meg. Her letter to me in the winter of '53:

What can I say, Sara? Except this. I know how deeply you once loved him. I don't ask for a miraculous reconciliation. All I ask is that, somehow, you find a way to forgive him - and to communicate your forgiveness to him. I think it would mean an enormous amount to him. He is now a deeply unhappy man. He needs your help to find his way back to himself.

But, oh no, I couldn't be seen to weaken from my position. I had self-righteousness on my side. He had to be permanently condemned. He'd made his bed (as I so caustically wrote back to Meg). Now he could lie in it. Alone.

'Eventually, Meg engaged in some delicate diplomacy with Dorothy', Jack said. 'At heart, my wife has always been a complete pragmatist. And the reason she took me back was an utterly pragmatic one: living alone with a small child was difficult. "As far as I'm concerned," she told me, "you're a second pair of hands, nothing more. Except, of course, to Charlie. He needs a father. It might as well be you'."

'And you still went back after she said that?' I asked.

'Yes. I went back. To a loveless marriage. But I'd made a vow, a commitment. I tell you, Catholic guilt is something to behold. But the real reason I went back was Charlie. I couldn't stand to be apart from Charlie'.

'I'm sure he needs you very much'.

'And I him. Without Charlie, I don't think I would have made it through the last couple of years'.

He suddenly shook his head, with annoyance.

'Sorry, sorry - that sounds melodramatic'.

'Are you all right?'

'Never better', he said, taking a nervous drag on his cigarette.

'You look a little... wan'.

'No. I look like shit'.

'You're not well, are you?'

His fingers closed around the coffee cup again. He continued to avoid looking at me.

'I wasn't well. A bad bout of hepatitis. Word of advice: never eat cherrystones at City Island'.

'It was just hepatitis?' I asked, trying not to sound overtly sceptical.

Another fast drag of his cigarette.

'Do I look that bad?'

'Well...'

'Don't answer that. But yeah - hepatitis can really kick the crap out of you'.

'You've been off work?'

'For six months'.

'Good God...'

'Steele and Sherwood have been pretty understanding. Full pay for the first three months, half pay since then. It's meant things have been a little tight, especially with the beautiful Kate now in our lives. But we've managed'.

'Are things now better between you and Dorothy?'

'Kate's made a difference. It's given us something to talk about. Other than Charlie, that is'.

'There must have been some sort of thaw between the two of you before then', I said, nodding towards the baby carriage.

'Not really. Just a night when we both had four Scotches too many, and Dorothy momentarily forgot that, at heart, she didn't like me'.

'I hope Kate makes you both very...'

He cut me off. His tone was suddenly harsh.

'Yeah, thanks for the Hallmark Cards sentiment'.

'I mean that, Jack. I don't wish you any ill'.

'You sure?'

'I never did'.

'But you didn't forgive me either'.

'You're right. For a long time, I found it very hard to forgive what you'd done'.

'And now?'

'The past is the past'.

'I can't undo what happened'.

'I know'.

He reached over to where my right hand was resting on the table. He covered it with his own. As soon as he touched me, I felt something akin to a small electrical charge course up my arm... the same charge I'd felt on that first night in 1945. After a moment, I moved my left hand on top of his.

'I'm so sorry', he said.

'It's okay', I said.

'No', he said quietly, 'it will never be okay'.

I suddenly heard myself say, 'I forgive you'.

Silence. We said nothing for a very long time. Then Kate began to stir - some quiet burbling sounds quickly escalating into a full-scale lament. Jack stood up and hunted around the baby carriage until he found the pacifier she had spit out. As soon as it was back between her lips, she ejected it again and continued crying.

'She's in the market for a bottle, I'm afraid', Jack said. 'I'd better get home'.

'Okay', I said.

He sat down quickly again opposite me.

'Can I see you again?' he asked.

'I don't know'.

'I understand...'

'There's no one else'.

'That's not what I was implying'.

'It's just... well... I guess I don't know what I think right now'.

'No rush', he said. 'Anyway, I have to go out of town for a week or so. It's a business thing. Up in Boston. Some account Steele and Sherwood wants me to handle when I go back to work next month'.

'Are you well enough to travel?'

'I look worse than I am'.

Kate's crying now escalated.

'You'd better go', I said.

He squeezed my hand one last time.

'I'll call you from Boston', he said.

'Okay', I said. 'Call me'.

He stood up. He rearranged the blanket around Kate. He turned towards me again. I stood up. Suddenly he pulled me towards him - and kissed me. I met his kiss. And held it. It only lasted a moment. When he ended it, he whispered:

'Goodbye'.

Then he put both hands on the baby carriage and pushed it forward.

I sat down in the booth. I crossed my arms on the table. I laid my head atop them. I sat that way for a very long time.

For the next week, the shock lingered. I did my work. I saw movies. I saw friends. I kept replaying that kiss in my head. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't know anything anymore.

He said he would call. He didn't call. But he did write. A short card, with a Boston postmark. It was scribbled in a shaky hand.

I'm still here. It should be over soon.

I love you.

Jack

I read that card over and over, trying to decipher its underlying meaning. Eventually I decided there was no underlying meaning. He was still in Boston. Whatever he was doing would end shortly. He loved me.

And I still loved him.

But I expected nothing. Because - as I had learned - if you expect nothing, then anything is a surprise.

Another week went by. No calls. No cards. I remained calm. On Monday morning, April fifteenth, I was running out the door, en route to a press screening of some film. I was late, the traffic on Broadway was grim, so I decided to skip the bus and grab the subway downtown. I walked briskly to the 79th Street station, buying a New York Times from the newsie who was always out in front. I climbed aboard the downtown train. I did my usual quick scan of the paper. When I reached the Obituary page, I noticed that the lead death of the day was a Hartford insurance executive who once worked with my father. I quickly read his obituary, and was about to move on to the opposite page when my gaze stumbled on a short listing amidst the page-wide columns of Deaths:

MALONE, John Joseph, age 33, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, on April 14th. Husband of Dorothy, father of Charles and Katherine. Formerly of Steele and Sherwood Public Relations Inc., New York. Will be much mourned by family and friends. Funeral Mass, Wednesday, April 17th, Holy Trinity Church, West 82nd Street, Manhattan. House private. No flowers please.

I only read it once. Then I lowered the paper on to my lap. I stared ahead of me. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I didn't notice the passage of time. Until a man in a uniform came over to me and said, 'You okay, lady?'

I now realized that the train had stopped. The carriage was empty.

'Where are we?' I managed to ask.

'The end of the line'.

Fifteen

TWO DAYS LATER, I went to the funeral. The church - Holy Trinity - wasn't large, but it still seemed cavernous. There were only twenty or so mourners in attendance. They all sat in the front two pews - directly facing the casket. It was surrounded by four lit candles, and draped in an American flag - because, as befitting any veteran of the Armed Forces, Jack was entitled to a funeral with full military honors. Two soldiers in dress uniform stood at attention on either side of the coffin. The service began with the tolling of a bell. A priest and two altar boys marched down the aisle. One of the boys held a smoking censer of incense. The other carried a large gold cross. The priest - a short, greying man with a hard face - walked around the coffin, sprinkling it with holy water. Then he mounted the pulpit and began the Latin Mass. His voice was tough, no-nonsense. Like the man he was burying, the priest was a Brooklyn boy. I kept wondering if he had ever heard Jack's confession.

A baby began to cry in the front row. It was Kate. She was being held by her mother. Dorothy's face was drawn and tired. Next to her sat Charlie - in a blazer and a pair of flannel pants. He was the image of his father. So much so that I found it hard to look at him.

The priest moved briskly through the Latin prayers of the Mass. Whenever he reverted back to English and spoke about 'our dear departed brother, Jack', I felt my eyes sting. There were a few muffled sobs - largely from Meg, who sat on the other side of Charlie, her arm around his shoulders. I didn't recognize any of the other mourners. I sat in the back row of the church, far away from the assembled crowd. I mixed in with a few local parishioners who had wandered in to say prayers, or simply seek shelter from the wet April day.

I had to be here. I had to say goodbye. But I also knew that I belonged in the back of the church - away from Dorothy and the children; away from Meg. I had caused enough grief within this family. I didn't want to cause more by making an appearance. So I arrived at the church fifteen minutes before the funeral, and waited in a doorway on the opposite side of 82nd Street. I watched as two limousines pulled up out front, and the family entered the church. I loitered opposite for another five minutes - until I was certain that all the other mourners had entered. Then, wrapping a scarf tightly around my head, I crossed the street, climbed the church stairs and - with my head lowered - slipped quickly into the back row. The sight of the coffin was like a kick in the stomach. Up until this moment, the idea that Jack was dead seemed absurd, inconceivable. After reading his obituary in the New York Times, I forgot all about the screening I was supposed to attend, and instead found myself wandering aimlessly around the city for the balance of the day. At some juncture, I made my way home. It was dark. I opened the door. I let myself inside. I took off my coat. I sat down in an armchair. I remained in that armchair for a very long time. Only after an hour or so did I notice that I had failed to turn a light on in the apartment; that I was sitting alone in the dark. The phone started to ring. I ignored it. I went into my bedroom. I undressed and got into bed. I pulled the covers tight over me. I stared up at the ceiling. I kept expecting to fall apart, to come asunder and weep uncontrollably. But I was too concussed to cry. The enormity of it all - the terrible realization that I would never talk to him again - rendered me insensible. I couldn't fathom his loss. Nor could I now fathom why I had spent four years being so stubborn, so intractable, so unforgiving. Four years separated from the man I loved - a separation sparked by his dire mistake... but then fueled by my inability to be understanding, to show mercy. By punishing him I had punished myself. Four years. How could I have squandered those four years?

I didn't sleep that night. At some point I got out of bed, I got dressed. I left the apartment and sat for two hours in an all-night coffee shop on Broadway and 76th Street. Dawn arrived. I stood up. I paid my bill. I walked over to Riverside Park. I walked down to the river. I sat on a bench. I stared out at the Hudson. I kept willing myself to break down - to have that big cathartic moment. But all I could do was look out blankly at the water and wonder whether I had, in my own way, killed him.

I finally returned to the apartment. The clock in the kitchen read nine fifteen a.m. The phone rang. This time I answered it. It was Joel Eberts.

'Thank God', he said, after I picked up. 'I called all day yesterday. You had me worried'.

'No need', I said.

'You sound tired'.

'I had a bad night'.

'I'm not surprised', he said. 'After I saw the announcement in the Times yesterday, I wondered...'

'I'm handling it', I said quietly.

'Do you have any idea about the cause of death?'

'No'.

'He didn't try to make contact since you were back in the city?'

'No, never', I lied, unable to talk about anything right now.

'That was probably for the best'.

I said nothing.

'You sure you're okay, Sara?'

'It's just a shock, that's all'.

'Well, if you're not okay, I just want you to know that I'm here. Call me anytime'.

'Thanks'.

'And whatever you do... don't feel guilty. It was all a long time ago'.

But I did blame myself. Totally.

Sheer exhaustion forced me into bed at seven that evening. I woke just after five. It was still dark outside - but I had slept deeply, so I felt curiously rested. I knew that the funeral would begin in just over four hours. I dreaded going. I had no choice but to go.

Now, sitting in the rear of the church, I kept my head lowered as the words of the Mass reverberated around my ears.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem.

Lamb of God, thou takest away the sins of the world, grant them rest.

Or, even more piercing:

Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla judicandus homo reus; huic ergo parce, Deus.

On this day full of tears, when from the ashes arises guilty man, to be judged: Oh Lord, have mercy upon him.

I pressed my fingers hard against my eyes. I had judged him. And yes, I had finally forgiven him. Far too late.

Kate started to cry again. Only this time she could not be consoled. After a few minutes, she was wailing. I had been keeping my head bowed - but I raised it just as Meg was coming up the aisle. She had obviously decided to relieve Dorothy of the baby, as she had her niece in her arms, and was heading for the door. She saw me and froze - her face initially registering shock. Then it hardened into something approaching pure cold contempt. I quickly lowered my head again. I wanted to flee - but I knew she would be outside with the baby. I sat there for ten minutes, feeling total shame. The Mass forged on - the priest asking us again to pray for the soul of 'a good husband, a good father, a fine responsible man'. As he fell silent for a moment, I heard footsteps. I stole a quick glance, and saw Meg already halfway down the central aisle, carrying a now-subdued Kate back towards the front row. Immediately, I ducked out of the pew and moved quickly through the front door, down the steps, and into the first cab I could hail.

'Where you going?' the driver asked.

'I don't know. Just drive'.

He headed down Broadway. At 42nd Street, I left the cab and ducked into the first movie house I could find. I sat through a double-feature. Then I moved on to the next movie house, and sat through another double-feature. Then I walked to the Automat and drank a cup of coffee. While there, I reached a decision that had been formulating in my brain during all those hours of non-stop movies. I finished the coffee. I checked my watch. It was just after seven p.m. I went back out on to 42nd Street and hailed a cab going east. At First Avenue, I asked the taxi to pull up in front of an apartment complex called Tudor City. There was a doorman on duty. He was busy with a delivery of groceries. I told him I was here to see Margaret Malone. He looked me over and decided I didn't appear sinister.

'Is she expecting you?'

I nodded.

'Apartment Seven E. Go right on up'.

I took the elevator to the seventh floor. I marched straight down the corridor to Apartment E. Before I lost my nerve, I rang the bell. After a moment, the door opened. Meg was standing there, still dressed in the black suit she had worn to the funeral. She looked drained, exhausted. A lit cigarette was in her left hand. She flinched when she saw me. Her lips tightened.

'You've got to be kidding', she said.

'Meg, can I... ?'

'No. You can't. Now get lost'.

'If you'd just hear me out...'

'You mean, the way you heard my brother out? Go fuck yourself'.

With that, she slammed the door. I put a hand against the wall for support, until I stopped shaking. After a moment, the door opened again. Meg suddenly looked crushed, heartbroken. I took a step towards her. She buried her head in my shoulder. She wept loudly. I put my arms around her - and finally cried too.

When we both calmed down, she brought me into her living room and motioned me towards an armchair. The apartment was a small one-bedroom efficiency - indifferently furnished, crammed with books and periodicals and overflowing ashtrays. Meg disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.

'Medicine', she said, pouring out two shots. She handed me a glass, collapsed into an armchair opposite mine, and lit a fresh cigarette. After two deep drags, she finally spoke.

'I really never wanted to see you again'.

'I don't blame you', I said.

'But I also understood you. If it had been Jack, instead of Eric, I would have been merciless'.

'I was too merciless'.

Another deep drag on her cigarette. 'Yeah', she said. 'You were. But... he told me you forgave him'.

'He said that?'

'Yeah. Around a week before he died. He knew he was going for over a year'.

'A year?'

'At least. Leukemia is pretty damn remorseless. Once you've got it, you know the jig is up'.

'Leukemia?' I said, sounding shocked. 'But he had no history...'

'Yeah - it just came out of nowhere. Like most catastrophes'.

'So Jack wasn't in Boston on business?'

'No - he was at Mass General Hospital, under the care of some big-cheese blood specialist - one of the best in the country. He was trying some last-ditch treatment to save him. But as the doc told me around a week before Jack went, he was beyond treatment'.

'At least Steele and Sherwood was picking up the bill'.

'Are you kidding me? Steele and Sherwood didn't pay a penny of his medical costs'.

'But he told me he was going back to work for them... that they had him on sick leave'.

'That's because he didn't want to tell you the truth'.

'What truth?'

'They fired him two years ago'.

I reached for the whiskey glass and took a long drink.

'But he was one of their star executives', I said.

'Yeah', Meg said. ' Was. Until he fell apart after...'

She hesitated a minute.

'All right: I'll give it to you straight, Sara. After Eric died and you refused to deal with him, Jack had something of a breakdown. He stopped sleeping, he lost a lot of weight, he started showing up for meetings looking unshaven and sloppy. Once or twice - he actually broke down in front of clients. To their credit, Steele and Sherwood were pretty understanding. After around eight months of this kind of wayward behavior, they put him on sick leave, and actually dispatched him to a psychiatrist at the company's expense. Everyone thought he was getting better. But we were wrong'.

'Was that when you wrote me in Paris?'

'Yes. That is when I wrote you'.

One letter. One short, generous letter was all that was asked of me. And I couldn't bring myself even to do that. Pride is the most blinding and self-indulgent of all emotions.

'Anyway', Meg said, 'during his few weeks back at work, everyone thought that he was returning to his old self. But he couldn't pull it off. He started missing meetings, and seemed unable to close any deal. They put up with him for another six months, then finally called him in one day and asked him to clear his desk. Again, they were decent with him: six months' severance pay, and health care benefits for a year. But he was now completely unemployable - especially as he sank back into a depression after they laid him off. At least Kate's birth picked him up a bit - but right after she came along, he started looking very anemic, and the lymph nodes in his neck began to bulge. I kept telling him that he shouldn't worry - that his body was reacting to all the stress he'd been under. But personally, I feared the worst. So did Jack. And when the diagnosis finally came...'

She broke off and reached for the Scotch bottle. Both our glasses were topped up.

'I have to tell you', she said, 'that Dorothy was amazing through most of this. Given that she really couldn't stand my brother - that the whole marriage was a massive mistake, and she truly loathed everything about his life with you - she still stuck by him. Right to the end'.

'He told me that she threw him out after he testified in Washington'.

'Yes - she was pretty appalled at him for cooperating with the Committee... especially when she found out how it triggered your brother's death. Worst yet, she couldn't stomach seeing him so broken by the fact that he'd lost you. Not that I could blame her. But eventually - after a lot of talking from me - she let him come home. Because, deep down, I think she hated being on her own. Not that she would have anything to do with him in a "marital" way again - except for one drunken night, which is how Kate appeared on the scene'.

'He did mention that'.

'Well, what he probably didn't mention was that his severance pay was all spent after six months. Then Kate arrived, then the leukemia was diagnosed - but by that time, his health insurance had run out. So the last year of his life was a complete financial disaster. He had a little stock - but he had to sell all that to pay his doctor's bills. It really got bad for a while. So bad that I've been paying their rent for the last three months. And - between the Mass General Hospital tab and the funeral - Dorothy's looking at about eight thousand dollars' worth of debt... not to mention the little problem of now raising two kids on her own'.

I took another needed sip of whiskey.

'I feel this is all my fault', I said.

'That's dumb - and you know it'.

'But I should have written him that letter you wanted me to write'.

'Yes - you should have done that. But would it have stopped him from falling apart again? Who the hell knows? He still blamed himself for Eric. And as for his illness... Sara, despite what some dimestore romantic novelists might like to think, a broken heart has never caused leukemia. Jack collided with his genetic fate. It's as simple as that'.

'But if I had forgiven him years ago...'

'Now is it you who wants absolution?'

'I was wrong'.

'I'll agree with that. But so was Jack. And yeah - for a while I really loathed you for not helping him when he needed you'.

'Not now?'

She crushed out her cigarette, and instantly lit up another. 'I've lost my brother, my only sibling. Just like you've lost yours. So hate's rather pointless under the circumstances, isn't it? Anyway, you meeting him a couple of weeks ago meant a lot to him'.

'If only he'd told me exactly how sick he was'.

'What good would that have done? Anyway, he was right not to tell you. Just as I also know that, in all those letters he wrote to you, he never once mentioned his breakdown, or getting fired. He had his dignity, Jack. More to the point, he felt he'd burdened you enough - and that he didn't want to make you feel guilty. All he kept telling me - over and over again - was how much he missed you, and how sorry he was'.

'I never read the letters'.

'You could now'.

'I threw them out'.

Meg shrugged.

'He loved you, Sara. You should have seen his face whenever he talked about you. It was goddamn incandescent. I'd never seen anything like it. Didn't understand it, to be honest - because I'd never felt that way about anyone. All right, he could be something of a fuck-up, my brother. He made some terrible calls. He didn't know how to face up to big decisions. He had an awful habit of losing his nerve. And God, how he hated himself for failing you twice. And for failing Eric. Just as he also hated himself for failing Dorothy and the kids. But I also know that, at heart, he was just stumbling through like the rest of us. Trying his best. It may not have amounted to much. But, at least, he truly loved you. Without condition. And how often in life does that ever happen?'

I knew the answer to that question - but I didn't articulate it. Because I just couldn't.

'Would you do something for me?' I finally asked.

'I doubt it. But, go on - try me'.

'I want you to ask Dorothy to meet me'.

'Forget it. I may not hate you anymore. She does. She always has. And now... now the lady's got enough problems to handle without trying to forgive you. Which - I promise you - she never will'.

'I don't want her forgiveness. I just want to...'

'I don't care what you want to do. There is absolutely no way that my sister-in-law will ever agree to meet you'.

'Hear me out', I said.

Meg did just that. And sat quietly for a moment or so after I finished talking with her.

'All right', she said. 'I'll see what I can do'.

A few days later, she called me at home.

'I've spoken with Dorothy. It took some work - but she's agreed to see you. I didn't explain much to her. In fact, I kept it all very vague - except to say that I thought it was important you met. Believe me, she was very reluctant. But I brought her around - telling her that you had a crucial matter you needed to discuss with her. Don't expect this to be pleasant, Sara. She feels you're responsible for many of her problems'.

'She's right. I am'.

'There's a coffee shop on the corner of Amsterdam and Eighty-Sixth. Can you make tomorrow at four? I've arranged to leave work early, so I can stay with Charlie and Kate while she meets you'.

I agreed. The next afternoon, I got to the coffee shop just before four. I found a booth at the back. I ordered tea, and found myself stirring it constantly as I waited for Dorothy to arrive. She showed up ten minutes late. She was dressed in a simple tweed skirt and a Peck and Peck blouse. She looked very tired - the dark moons under her eyes accentuated by the way her hair was pulled back in a tightly woven bun. She sat down opposite me. She did not exchange a greeting. She simply said, 'You wanted to see me'.

'Thanks for coming', I said, sounding deeply tense. 'Coffee?'

She shook her head.

'Anything else. Tea? Hot chocolate? A sandwich?'

'Nothing. You wanted to see me. Here I am. I have about twenty minutes, no more'.

'Isn't Meg with the kids?'

'Yes, but Charlie's got tonsillitis - and we're expecting the pediatrician to make a house call around four thirty. So this will have to be fast'.

'Well...' I said, clearing my throat, really not knowing how to broach the subject I was about to bring up. 'Meg was telling me you were having some difficulties'.

'My sister-in-law has a big mouth. My difficulties are my business, not yours'.

'I wasn't trying to pry or be nosy. It's just... I would like to try to help'.

'Help?' she said with a hollow laugh. 'You help me? No thanks'.

'I can understand why you might feel...'

'Don't patronize me, Miss Smythe'.

'I'm not patronizing you'.

'Then don't tell me how I feel. I know how I feel - which is angry. Angry that I didn't have the courage, ten years ago, to tell Jack that we didn't have to get married, just because I was pregnant. Angry that I stayed in a marriage when there was no love between us. And angry that I didn't have the guts to end it when he first told me about you'.

'I never pushed him to leave you'.

'Oh, I was well aware of that. He told me that you refused to play the happy home-wrecker; that you were oh-so-understanding of his need to keep his family together - even though you oh-so-adored him'.

'I did adore him'.

'Congratulations. He was just as gooey about you. It was like living with a lovesick adolescent. I don't know why the hell I put up with it'.

'Why did you put up with it?'

'Because there was a child. Because I was brought up to believe that you lived with your mistakes. Because I was also brought up to believe that respectability meant everything. And because I'm a stupid, weak woman who didn't have the courage to realize that she could live without a husband. And then, of course, it turned out that my husband was a stupid, weak man who also ratted on others'.

'He only did that because he was terrified of losing his job, and undermining his ability to support you and Charlie'.

'Don't tell me you're defending him now? Especially after you emotionally crippled the fool by rejecting him. Anyway, the great dumb irony of the situation was that, by turning snitch, he lost everything: you, the job, me for a while...'

'You took him back, though...'

'More weakness on my part. Charlie missed him desperately. I decided that he needed his father'.

'But you didn't?'

Long silence.

'Of course I needed him. I didn't love him... but I still needed him. And then, after he got sick... it's a strange thing, isn't it, how we sometimes discover our real feelings about people a little too late. It was awful watching him go. Awful. And I was suddenly desperate to keep him. At any cost. That's why he went to Boston - because I'd heard of this specialist at Mass General who was trying a new sort of treatment for leukemia. Jack didn't want to go - mainly because he knew how much it was going to cost, and because we didn't have the money. But I insisted. Because I so wanted him to live'.

'Then you did love him'.

She shrugged. 'Eventually. Yes. When he was finally free of you'.

I said nothing.

'He never made contact with you after you came back to the city?' she asked.

'No'.

'Are you telling me the truth?'

'Yes, I am', I said, trying my best to look truthful.

'I'm glad to hear that. Because I didn't want him to see you again. Because you didn't deserve...'

She broke off, and absently began to shred the paper napkin on the table.

'How I hated you', she whispered. 'And the reason I so hated you is because: you had his love'.

'But then I threw it away'.

'Yes, you did. And I'll admit something rather ugly: I was so pleased when you did that. Because I thought: she will come to regret this. Which you have'.

She tossed away the shredded napkin. We fell silent again. I said, 'I know that you now have financial problems'.

'What concern is that of yours?'

'I'd like to help you'.

'No way'.

'Please hear me out. When Eric died, there was an insurance policy from NBC which was worth forty-two thousand dollars. I had it invested. It's now worth almost sixty-five thousand. What I'd like to propose is this: I give you eight thousand straight away to settle all the medical and funeral debts. Then I take the remaining fifty-seven thousand, and set up a trust for Kate and Charlie. The trust will generate an income which you can use for their school and eventually college, and anything else you think...'

She cut me off.

'And what do you want out of this?'

'Nothing'.

'I don't believe that'.

'It's the truth'.

'You're actually willing to give me and my children nearly sixty grand... with no strings attached?'

'That's right'.

'Why?'

'Because it's the right thing to do'.

'Or maybe because it's a way for you to salve your conscience'.

'Yes, maybe it is'.

She reached for another napkin, and began to shred it.

'No strings?' she asked.

'None', I said.

'I am not a charity case'.

'This is a gift, not charity'.

'And what will you live on when you're old and no longer writing columns?'

'I had quite a reasonable divorce settlement. It's all invested. One day, it will turn into a very nice pension'.

The napkin came apart in her fingers.

'You couldn't have children, could you?' she asked.

I met her gaze.

'That's right: I couldn't have children. He told you that?'

'Yes, he did - as a way of assuaging my fears that he'd start a second family with you, and then disappear. At the time, I was really pleased that you'd never have children. Isn't that terrible? But that's how much I hated you. In my mind, you threatened everything I had'.

'Isn't that always the basis of hate?'

'I guess it is'.

Pause.

'I want you to take the money, Dorothy'.

'And if I did...?'

'It's the end of the matter. The money is yours'.

'This... gift... will never, never give you any entitlement to Kate or Charlie...'

'I expect nothing in return'.

'You will get nothing in return. That's the one string I will attach to this gift: I will accept it only if you agree that, as long as I'm alive, you will never make contact with my children. And one more thing: after today, I never want to see or hear from you ever again'.

Without hesitating, I said, 'Fine'.

'I have your word?'

'You have my word'.

Silence. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a little notebook and a pen. She wrote a name and a number on a leaf of paper, then tore it out and handed it to me.

'This is the phone number for my lawyer. You can talk to him about setting up the trust'.

'I'll get on to it tomorrow morning'.

Silence. Then she said, 'You know what I think sometimes? How if he hadn't run into you again that afternoon in Central Park... I remember that afternoon so clearly. We were out walking. He was tired. He wanted to go home. But it was such a beautiful day I insisted we stop by the gazebo next to the lake. Suddenly, there you were... and everything changed. All because I asked him to loiter for a bit by the lake'.

'It's the way things work, isn't it? Chance, happenstance...'

'And choice. Things might happen accidentally - like me getting pregnant, or you meeting an old lover and his family in the park. But then we make choices. That's what we have to live with: not the accident, the fluke - but the choices we make in the wake of it. Because they really determine our destiny'.

She glanced at her watch. 'I must go'.

She stood up. I did so too.

'Goodbye then', I said.

'Goodbye', she said.

Then she quickly touched my sleeve and said two words: 'Thank you'.

I never saw her again. I never spoke with her again. I never came near her children. I honored the conditions she demanded. I kept my word.

Until she died.

Part Four

Kate

One

'UNTIL SHE DIED'.

The manuscript ended there. I held the last page in my hand, staring down at that final line. After a moment, I let it drop on to the hefty pile of pages scattered on the floor by the sofa. I sat back. I gazed blankly out the window, trying to think, not knowing what to think. Dawn's early light was cleaving the dark sky. I glanced at my watch. Six fifteen. I had been reading all night.

Eventually, I forced myself to stand up. I walked into the bedroom. I stripped off my clothes. I stood under a shower for a very long time. I got dressed. I made coffee. While it percolated, I gathered up the manuscript pages and returned them to the box in which they came. I drank the coffee. I picked up my coat and the manuscript box. I left the apartment. The doorman hailed me a taxi. I told the driver I was heading to 42nd Street and First Avenue. As we cruised downtown, I turned on my cellphone and made a call. Meg answered, her 'Hello' accompanied by a bronchial wheeze.

'I'm coming over', I said. 'Now'.

'What the hell time is it?' she said.

'Just after seven'.

'Jesus Christ. Has something happened?'

'Yes. I've been up all night. Reading'.

'Reading what?'

'I think you know'.

Silence. I broke it. 'Just as I think you know where I was yesterday evening'.

'Haven't a clue', she said.

'Liar'.

'I've been called worse. Should I put on a flame-retardant dress before you get here?'

'Yes', I said, and hung up.

She was actually dressed in a pair of men's pajamas and an old bathrobe when I arrived. The requisite two cigarettes were already burning in an ashtray. The television was tuned to CNN, the volume far too loud. As always, there was a pile of books and periodicals by an armchair. The remnants of a recent supper - a half-eaten Chinese take-out - had yet to be cleared off the little table that doubled as a desk and dining area. The apartment was the same as I'd always known it all my life. It was just as Sara must have seen it - when she came here on the night of my father's funeral in 1956.

'I'm never talking to you again', I said, as I walked in and tossed the manuscript box on her sofa.

'Glad to hear it', she said, clicking off the television. 'Coffee or coffee?'

'Coffee. And an explanation'.

'For what?' she asked, pouring me a cup from her old electric percolator.

'Don't go coy on me, Meg. It doesn't suit you'.

'And there I was, thinking that I might try "coy" for Christmas'.

'Quite a book', I said, nodding towards the manuscript box. 'I presume you've read it?'

'Yes', she said. 'I've read it'.

'She didn't hire you as her editor, did she?'

'I read it as a friend'.

'Oh yes, I forgot. You and Mystery Woman just happened to have been bosom buddies for the last four decades. And now I suppose you're going to help her get her book published?'

'She doesn't want it published. She wrote it for herself'.

'Then why did she want me to read it?'

'It's part of your life. You needed to know'.

'I needed to know now? Right after my mother's funeral?'

She just shrugged and said nothing. I said, 'You should have told me, Meg. You should have told me everything years ago'. 'You're right, I should have. But Dorothy was very insistent. Because she made it very clear that she wouldn't touch the trust if either of you found out'.

'She should never have touched the trust'.

'If she hadn't, you would never have had that fancy private school education of yours...'

'Big deal'.

'It was a big deal... and you know it. Because it took a lot of guts for Dorothy to do what she did. Jesus, imagine it: having to rely on money from your late husband's lover to get your kids through school'.

'But I thought Uncle Ray paid for our school and college'.

'Ray never gave your mom a dime. He was the original WASP tightwad. No kids, a big white-shoe practice in Boston, an even bigger bank account. But when his sister and her husband were in dire straits - after Jack lost his job at Steele and Sherwood - Ray pleaded poverty. Even when Jack was dying at Mass General, that asshole didn't once pay him a visit... even though the hospital was only a ten-minute walk from his Beacon Hill townhouse. Worse yet, he didn't exactly spend a lot of time comforting his sister during that time. One lunch on the afternoon before Jack died, during which he told his sister that she should never have married "that Brooklyn mick". Dorothy hardly spoke to him after that. Then again, I don't think they ever really liked each other anyway. He always disapproved of everything to do with Dorothy. Especially when it came to my brother'.

'But I was still told that Ray was my great benefactor'.

'Your mom had to find some story to tell you about the money. God knows, it sickened her to accept Sara's gift. And though she never said much about it, I know that it ate away at her. But she was the ultimate pragmatist. She couldn't afford your education on what she made as a librarian. So she was going to swallow her pride - as she always did, the fool - and do what was best for the two of you'.

'You mean, like keeping all this from me until my mid-forties?'

'She was adamant that neither of you knew. Because I think she feared what you both might think. Anyway, a week before she died, I went to see her at New York Hospital. She knew she only had a couple more days. And she asked me: "Once I'm no longer around, are you going to tell her?" I said I'd stay schtum if that's what she wanted. "It's your call," she told me. "But if you do decide she should know, let her tell Kate. It's her story as much as mine."'

'But how did she know even where Sara was?'

'From time to time, she'd ask me about her. She knew that Sara and I had become good pals, that we were in pretty regular contact. Just as she also knew that, through me, Sara was keeping tabs on you'.

'Keeping tabs on me? Judging by that photo gallery by her door, not to mention the album she sent me, she was doing a little more than that. With your help'.

'You're right. I gave her all the photographs. I supplied her with all the newspaper clippings. I kept her abreast of all that was happening to you. Because she wanted to know. Because she genuinely cared about you. And because I felt she deserved to follow your progress'.

'Mom didn't mind that?'

'She didn't say. But, about ten years after Jack's death, she did make this passing comment about how "that woman has been very good about staying away from us". A couple of years later - when you were in Guys and Dolls at school - Sara showed up at a performance. I was with your mom, and I know that Dorothy saw her. But she said nothing. Just as she said nothing when she showed up at your graduations from Brearley and Smith. Again, Dorothy knew she was there - but she also saw that Sara was playing by the rules. And I think, in her own curious way, she liked the fact that she was so interested in you, and how you were doing. Remember: by the time you graduated from Smith, your dad was dead for twenty years. And Dorothy realized that the trust had made all the difference when it came to raising you and Charlie. So, in her own unspoken way, she was grateful'.

'But they never met again?'

'Nope. It was a four-decade silence... and they only lived seven blocks from each other. But you know what your mom was like. A cupcake with a reinforced steel filling'.

'Tell me about it. Negotiating with her was like taking on Jimmy Hoffa'.

'There you go. But though she was a hard ass, she was also pretty damn ethical. That's why she hinted to me that, if the story was going to be told to you, Sara would have to do it. Because it was her own unstated way of letting Sara know that she didn't go to her grave angry at her. It was a gesture, a mitzvah. I think Dorothy's final thought on the subject was: if I'm no longer here to worry about it, why not let her finally meet you'.

'Then why didn't you just come out and introduce us...'

'Your hard-ass mom had the last word on that. "If that woman decides she does want to meet Kate, you must promise me that you'll say nothing to Kate in advance. In fact, I want you to deny all knowledge of that woman. Let her figure out a way of getting in touch with Kate... and then see if Kate will listen to her'."

I shook my head in stunned incredulity. It was a classic Mom move. Forgiveness... but with a little get-the-message sting as part of the overall absolution package. She always knew how to ram home a moral point - yet to mask it behind a lily-scented smokescreen of decorum and propriety. This was, without question, her final masterstroke. She understood me better than anyone. She knew - damn her - that I'd play the hard bitch and resist all attempts to meet up with some old lady I'd initially file under dotty. Just as she also knew that Sara was strong-willed enough to finally get her own way, and force a meeting. And then? Then I'd be in possession of the story - but only Sara's version of events. Had Mom wanted to put across her point of view, she herself would have told me everything before she died. Or she would have left a long letter of explanation. Instead, for reasons I still couldn't fathom, she chose silence... and the risk that I would only hear Sara's side of the story. And this decision baffled me completely.

'You still should have warned me that a bombshell was en route in my direction', I said.

'A promise is a promise', Meg said. 'Your mom made me swear on a stack of Gideons not to say a damn word to you. I knew you weren't going to be a member of my fan club after Sara finally met you. But... what can I say? If there's one worthwhile thing that Catholicism taught me, it was how to keep a secret'.

'Are you sure Charlie never knew?'

'Mr Self-Pity? Even as a kid, he was too absorbed in feeling sorry for himself to ever notice anything going on around him. And since he didn't deign to see your mom for the last fifteen years... Nah, Charlie-boy was way in the dark about this. And always will be. Unless you tell him now'.

'Why would I do that? Especially as it would just reinforce all of Charlie's beliefs about his dysfunctional heritage. And when he learned that Daddy was a rat...'

She suddenly turned on me. 'Never, never call him that again'. Her voice was hard, angry.

'Why the hell not?' I said. 'He only destroyed a couple of lives. And now - hey, presto! - back he comes to haunt mine'.

'Well, honey bun, I am so desperately sorry to hear that your fragile psyche was undermined by the discovery that your father was one complicated guy...'

'Complicated? He did some terrible things'.

'Yes he did. And God, how he paid for it. Just as Sara paid for her bad calls. You don't get through life without paying big time for getting it wrong'.

'Tell me about it. I'm the poster child for Getting It Wrong'.

'No - you're the poster child for self-flagellation. Which is so dumb'.

'That's me: Ms-Refuses-to-be-Happy. It's a great Malone family tradition'.

'What family isn't screwy? What family doesn't have some shit hidden in the attic? Big deal. But what saddens the hell out of me... what neither your mother nor I could ever work out... was why, over the past ten years, you always seemed so damn disappointed in everything. Especially yourself'.

'Because I am disappointing'.

'Don't say that'.

'Why not? I've failed everybody: my mom, my son. Even that shit, my ex-husband. And me. I've really failed me'.

'You are so wrong there', she said, trying to take my hand. I pulled it away.

'No. I'm not'.

'You know what I discovered some time ago? Everything in life is fundamentally catastrophic. But the thing is, most stories don't end happily or tragically. They just end. And usually in something of a muddle. So as long as you know that it's all a shambles with a definite terminus, well...'

'Oh I get it. Try to be happy within the shambles?'

'Hey, is happiness a federal offence?'

'I don't do happy'.

'You used to, you know'.

'Yeah, but that was before I started making mistakes...'

'With guys, you mean?'

'Perhaps'.

'Listen, I could write chapter and verse on every damn disappointment and sadness and failure I've suffered. So what? Terrible stuff happens to everyone. It's the basic law of living. But so is one simple fact: you have no choice but to keep going. Am I happy? Not particularly. But I'm not unhappy either'.

I stared down into my drink. I didn't know what to say, think, or feel anymore.

'Go home, Kate', Meg said gently. 'You need some sleep'.

'Understatement of the year', I said, picking myself up out of the chair. She stood up as well.

'I think I'll phone Mom's lawyer tomorrow', I said. 'It's time to get the will probated. Not that there's much to probate. The way I figure it, the trust was virtually depleted by the time I finished college'.

'She used the money wisely - for you guys'.

'I never wanted anything from her'.

'Yes, you did. Like every kid, you wanted a perfect, unflawed parent. Instead, you discovered that she was a mess. Just like the rest of us'.

I put on my coat. She picked up the manuscript box and said, 'Don't forget your book'.

'It's not my book. And how about you giving it back to her?'

'Oh no', she said, dropping the box in my hands. 'I'm not playing mailman for you'.

'I don't want to see her'.

'Then take it to a post office and send it to her'.

'Fine, fine', I said wearily. I hoisted the box. I reached for the front door. 'I'll call you tomorrow', I said.

'So we are going to talk again?'

'Do we have a choice?' I said.

'Go to hell', she said, giving me a fast, no-nonsense kiss on the cheek.

Outside Meg's building, I hailed a cab. I gave the driver my home address. Halfway there, I told him that I had decided to change destination. We were now heading to West 77th Street.

I reached her building just after eight. I pressed her bell on the front door intercom. She answered, sounding very awake. When she heard my voice, she buzzed me in immediately. She was waiting for me in the open door of her apartment. She was as carefully dressed and poised as before.

'This is a lovely surprise', she said.

'I'm not staying. I simply wanted to give you this'.

I handed over the box.

'You've read it already?' she asked.

'Yes. I've read it'.

We stood there, not knowing what to say next.

'Please come in', she finally said.

I shook my head.

'Please', she said. 'Just for a moment'.

I went inside. I didn't take off my coat. I sat down in one of her armchairs. I didn't accept her offer of coffee or tea. I didn't say anything for a while. And she shrewdly didn't attempt to draw me into a conversation. She just sat opposite me, waiting for me to speak.

'I wish I hadn't read your book', I finally said.

'I understand'.

'No, you don't', I said quietly. 'You can't begin to understand'.

Another silence. Then I said, 'The Jack Malone in your book... that's not the dad my mom told me about. I mean, he was Mr Morality, Mr Good Irish-Catholic. I always felt... I don't know... as if, compared to him, my mom was the lesser person. Some lowly school librarian who lived this tedious life with two kids in a cramped apartment, and who was so damn constrained that no other man would ever dream of marrying her'.

'Meg told me she did go out with the occasional fellow...'

'Yeah - when I was growing up, she dated one or two guys. But from the mid-seventies onwards, I don't think there was anyone. Maybe she'd been betrayed enough by dear old Dad'.

'You might be right'.

'You screwed up her life'.

She shrugged. And said, 'That's an interpretation. But it was her choice to stay with him. And that choice shaped the way her life ensued. Was it the right choice? I wouldn't have put up with such an arrangement. I would have thrown him out. But that's me - not your mother. So who's to say if it was the right choice or the wrong choice. It was just a choice'.

'Just like it was your choice to be my guardian angel. "Someone to watch over me." Didn't you have anything better to do with your life, Miss Smythe? Or were you so completely incapable of getting over the wonderful Jack Malone that you had to turn your attention to his daughter? Or, let me guess, I was your way of doing penance'.

She looked at me with a steady gaze. Her voice remained calm.

'Meg did warn me you took no prisoners...'

'I think I am a bit upset', I said. 'I'm sorry'.

'You have a right to be. It's a lot to take in. But just for the record: after your father died, I left journalism...'

'You? The writer who always needed an audience? I don't believe it'.

'I got sick of the sound of my own typewriter... and my own frothy shallowness. So I moved into publishing. I was an editor at Random House for thirty-five years'.

'You never married again?'

'No - but I was never short of male company. When I wanted it'.

'So you never got over my father?'

'No one ever matched Jack. But I came to terms with it... because I had to. Of course, I think about your father every day. Just as I think about Eric every day. But Jack's been dead for... what is it?.. God, so many years. Eric even longer. It's the past'.

'No, it's your past'.

'Exactly. My past. My choices. And do you want to know something rather amusing? When I die, all that past will vanish with me. It's the most astonishing thing about getting old: discovering that all the pain, all the drama, is so completely transitory. You carry it with you. Then, one day, you're gone - and nobody knows about the narrative that was your life'.

'Unless you've told it to somebody. Or written it down'.

She smiled a small smile. 'I suppose that's true'.

'Was that the object of getting me to read this literary exercise the day after I buried my mom?' I said, pointing towards the manuscript box. 'To finally let me in on a few sordid family secrets - and, in the process, share your pain?

Oh God, listen to me. She dismissed my sarcasm with a light shrug.

'Meg and I both felt that you should read this'.

'Why did you write it?'

'I wrote it for myself. And maybe for you too... though I didn't know if I'd live long enough for you to read this, and for us finally to meet'.

'You have some way of engineering a meeting, Miss Smythe. Couldn't you have waited a bit? I mean, I only buried my mother two days ago'.

Another patrician shrug.

'I'm sorry if...'

'And why did you have to stalk me?'

'That wasn't stalking. I came to the funeral because I felt I should be there, and pay my respects...'

'And I suppose that was you who called me at my mother's place after the funeral...'

'Yes, that was me. But Meg told me you'd decided to sleep there, and I just wanted to hear your voice and make certain you were all right'.

'You expect me to believe that?'

'It's the truth'.

'Just like you expect me to believe that, while we were growing up, you really never once saw me or my brother - even though, to all intents and purposes, you were funding our education?'

'I said, I didn't come near you. That doesn't mean that I didn't attend your graduation from Smith or Brearley'.

'Or didn't see me play Sister Sarah in my school production of Guys and Dolls?'

'Yes', she said with a slight smile. 'I was there'.

'And were you sneaking glimpses at Charlie throughout his childhood as well?'

She shook her head.

'Naturally, I was pleased that the trust helped pay for his education. But I really didn't follow his progress as closely'.

'Because he was the child who kept you from my dad?'

'Perhaps. Or maybe because you were the child I was supposed to have with your father'.

Silence. My head was swimming. I suddenly craved sleep.

'I've got to go. I'm very tired...'

'Of course you are', she said.

I stood up. She followed.

'I'm glad we finally met, Kate', she said.

'I'm sure you are. But I want you to know something: this is the last time we will ever do so. You're to stay away from Ethan and myself. Is that clear?'

She remained impassive. How the hell did she manage that?

'Whatever you want, Kate', she said.

I headed towards the door. She walked ahead of me and opened it. She touched my arm and held it.

'You're just like him, you know'.

'You know nothing about me...'

'I think I do. Because I also know that, unlike your brother, you were always there for Dorothy. Just as you are still there for Meg - who utterly adores you. She just wishes you were happier'.

I gently disengaged my arm from her grip.

'I wish that too', I said. Then I left.

Two

AS SOON AS I was outside her building, I walked halfway up the street. Then I suddenly sat down on the steps of a brownstone until I had composed myself. A thousand and one chaotic thoughts went swirling around my brain - all of them skewed, troubled. And I couldn't help but wonder: were these the same steps upon which my father sat down and wept when Sara told him it was over?

Another thought preoccupied me: the urgent need for sleep. I forced myself up. I found a taxi. I went home. I called Matt at his office. We had a civilized, neutral conversation. He told me that he'd taken Ethan to a Knicks game last night, and that our son was longing to see me this afternoon. I thanked Matt for looking after Ethan during the past few days. He asked me how I was doing.

I said, 'It's been a curious time'. He said, 'You sound tired'. I said, 'I am tired', and mentioned that I appreciated his thoughtfulness over the past week. Matt started to say something along the lines of how he hoped we could be friends again. I said nothing, except: 'No doubt we'll be in touch about Ethan stuff Then I hung up the phone and climbed into bed. As I closed my eyes and waited for sleep, I thought about that wartime photo of my dad, taken by my mom when they were both stationed in England. He was young, he was smiling, he was probably thinking: in a couple of weeks, I'll never again see the woman taking this picture. No doubt, similar thoughts were shared by that woman as she peered through the viewfinder. Here's one for the scrapbook: my wartime fling. That's what now so haunted me about that photo: the fact that an entire story was about to engulf the man in the picture and the woman behind the camera. But how could they have known? How can any of us recognize that inexplicable moment which seals our fate?

The image vanished. I slept. The alarm clock woke me just before three. I got dressed and walked over to collect Ethan from school. En route, I found myself once again trying to make sense of Sara's story. Once again, I failed - and instead started feeling overwhelmed by just about everything. When Ethan came bounding out of Allan-Stevenson's front door, he quickly searched the crowd of parents and nannies. Finding me, he smiled his shy smile. I bent down to kiss him. He looked up at me with worry.

'What's wrong, Ethan?' I asked.

'Your eyes are all red', he said.

I heard myself say: 'Really?'

'Have you been crying?'

'It's Grandma, that's all'.

We started walking towards Lexington Avenue.

'You'll be home tonight?' he asked me. I could hear the anxious edge to his voice.

'Not just tonight. I told Claire she didn't have to come in until Monday. So I'll also be picking you up at school tomorrow. Then we'll have the whole weekend to hang out, and do whatever you want'.

'Good', he said, taking my hand.

We stayed in that night. I helped Ethan with his homework. I made hamburgers. We horse traded: after he agreed to play two games of Snakes and Ladders with me, I granted him thirty minutes on his Game Boy. We popped popcorn and watched a video. I unwound for the first time in weeks. Only once was there a moment of sadness... when Ethan, snuggled up against me on the sofa, turned and said, 'Can we go see the dinosaurs after school tomorrow at the Museum?'

'Whatever you want'.

'Then can we all watch a movie here tomorrow night?'

'You mean, you and me? Sure'.

'And Daddy too?'

'I can invite him over, if you want'.

'And then on Saturday, we'll all get up and...'

'If I invite him over, Ethan, you know he won't be staying here. But I will ask him over if you want'.

He didn't answer me, and I didn't push the issue. As if by silent mutual agreement, we let the matter drop and returned our attention to the television screen. A few minutes later, he pulled my arms more tightly around him... his own unspoken way of telling me just how difficult he found this world of divided parents.

The next morning, after dropping Ethan off at school, I returned to the apartment and phoned Peter Tougas. Though I knew he had been my mother's lawyer for the past thirty years, I never had any dealings with him (I'd used an old Amherst friend, Mark Palmer, to handle my divorce and other judicial pleasantries). Mom didn't see much of Mr Tougas either. With the exception of her will, there was little in her life that had required legal counsel. When I called, his secretary put me straight through.

'Great minds think alike', he said. 'I had it down to call you in the next day or so. It's time to get things rolling on the probate front'.

'Could you fit me in around noon today? I'm out of the office until Monday, so I figured we might as well get together now, when there's no work pressure on me'.

'Noon is no problem', he said. 'You know the address?'

I didn't. Because I only met Peter Tougas for the first time at Mom's funeral. As it turned out, his office was in one of those venerable 1930s buildings that still line Madison Avenue in the lower fifties. His was a small-time legal practice, operating out of a three-roomed no-frills office, with just a secretary and a part-time book keeper as staff. Mr Tougas must have been around sixty. A man of medium height, with thinning grey hair, heavy black glasses, and a nondescript grey suit which looked about twenty years old. He was the antithesis of my uncle Ray, and his white-shoe patrician lawyer credentials. No doubt, Mom chose him exactly for that reason... not to mention the fact that his rates were reasonable.

Mr Tougas came out to greet me himself in the little anteroom where his secretary worked. Then he ushered me into his own office. He had a beat-up steel-and-wood desk, an old-style steel office chair, and two brown vinyl armchairs which faced each other over a cheap teak-veneered coffee table. The office looked like it had been furnished from a Green Stamps catalog. No doubt, this sort of frugality also appealed to Mom. It reflected the no-frills way she lived her own life.

He motioned me to sit in one of the armchairs. He took the other. A file marked 'Mrs Dorothy Malone' was already in position on the coffee table. It was surprisingly thick.

'So, Kate', he said in an accent with distinct Brooklyn cadences, 'you holding up?'

'I've had better weeks. It's been a strange time'.

'That it is. And excuse my directness - but it'll probably take you longer than you think to get back to normal. Losing a parent... your mother... is a very big deal. And never straightforward'.

'Yes', I said. 'I'm finding that out'.

'How's your son... Ethan, isn't it?'

'He's fine, thanks. And I'm very impressed you know his name'.

'Whenever I saw your mother, she always talked about him. Her only grandchild...' He stopped, knowing he'd made a gaffe. 'Or, at least, the only one she saw regularly'.

'You know that my brother's wife didn't... ?'

'Yes, Dorothy did tell me about all that. Though she didn't come right out and say it, I could tell just how much it upset her'.

'My brother is a very weak man'.

'At least he came to the funeral. He seemed very upset'.

'He deserved to be upset. "Better late than never" doesn't work as an excuse when the mother you virtually ignored for years is now dead. Still... I actually felt sorry for him. Which rather surprised me - given that I'm not exactly known for my benevolence'.

'That's not what your mother said'.

'Oh please...'

'I'm serious. The way she talked about you... well, I could tell that she considered you a very loyal daughter'.

'Mom often got things wrong'.

Mr Tougas smiled. 'She also said that you were very hard on yourself'.

'That she got right'.

'Well', he said, picking up the folder, 'shall we make a start?'

I nodded. He opened the folder, withdrew a thick document, and handed it to me.

'Here's a copy of your mother's will. I've got the original in the office safe, and will be sending it to Probate Court tonight - as long as you, the sole executor, approve it. Do you want to take a moment to read through it, or should I summarize everything?'

'Is there anything personal in the document I should know about?'

'No. It's all very straightforward, very clean. Your mother left everything to you. She put no stipulation on how you should disburse her estate. She did tell me, in our conversations, that she knew you'd be sensible about how you dealt with the trust. Were you ever aware of the trust's existence before your mom's death?'

I shook my head, then said, 'I've been finding out about a lot of things over the past couple of days'.

'Who told you about it? Miss Smythe?'

I flinched. 'You know her?'

'Personally? No. But your mother did tell me all about her'.

'So you knew about Miss Smythe and my father?'

'I was your mother's lawyer, Kate. So, yes, I did know about the background to the trust. Do you mind if I take you through its financial history?'

'Fine by me'.

'Well', he said, pulling out another batch of documents, 'the trust was created in nineteen fifty-six, with...' he flicked through a bunch of pages '... an opening capitalization of fifty-seven thousand dollars. Now your mom drew down the interest from the principal for twenty years. But then, in nineteen seventy-six...'

'The year I graduated from college'.

'That's right. Dorothy once mentioned that to me. Anyway, in seventy-six, she stopped drawing any income from the trust'.

'Because the trust fund was depleted, right?'

'Hardly', he said, looking at me with a certain paternal amusement. 'If your mother was only drawing down interest from the trust for twenty years, it means she never dug into the principal. In other words, the principal remained intact'.

'I don't understand...'

'It's very simple. After nineteen seventy-six, your mother never touched the trust again'.

'So what happened to it?'

'What happened to it?' he said with a laugh. 'Like the rest of us, it matured. And, fortunately, the people handling it...' (he mentioned the name of a big brokerage house)... 'they invested wisely on your mother's behalf. A largely conservative portfolio, with a small amount of adventurous stocks that paid off very nicely indeed'.

I was still finding all this difficult to comprehend. 'So, what you're saying is - after I left college, my mom left the trust alone?'

'That's right. She never touched a penny of it... even though her investment guy and myself both encouraged her to draw down some sort of income from it. But she always maintained that she was perfectly fine on what she had to live on'.

'That's not true', I heard myself saying. 'Money was always tight for her'.

'I kind of sensed that', he said. 'Which, quite frankly, made her decision never to invade the trust rather baffling. Especially as - given the way her portfolio was structured - the principal doubled itself every seven years. So, by ninety-five, the trust had grown to...' He peered down at some figures. 'Three hundred and fifty-two thousand dollars, and a couple of pennies'.

'Good God'.

'Hang on, I'm not done yet. Now in ninety-five, her investment guys took a couple of smart positions on all these new information technology companies, not to mention one or two emerging web browsers. And, of course, from ninety-six onwards, the market has been non-stop bullish. Which, in turn, means that they actually doubled the existing principal in five years'.

'Doubled?' I whispered.

'That's right. And, at close of business last Friday... which was the last time I asked them to give me an update... the trust stood at...'

Another squint at a column of figures.

'Right, here we are... Seven hundred and forty-nine thousand, six hundred and twelve dollars'.

Silence.

'That can't be right', I said.

'I can show you the computer print-out of the current balance. Your mother had money, all right. A lot of money. She just chose not to touch it'.

I was going to blurt out: ' Why didn't she?' But I knew the answer to that question. She chose not to touch it - because she was saving the money for me. Not that she would ever have even hinted at such a legacy. Because (and I could almost hear her telling this to Mr Tougas), ' I know far too many perfectly nice young people who have been ruined by a little too much money a little early in life. So I don't want Kate to know about this until after my death - at which point she should have already learned a thing or two about the value of money, and about making her own way in the world'.

Always one for the big moral lesson, my mom. Always one for denying herself everything. Always refusing to buy new clothes, new furniture, even a couple of reasonably modern, modest appliances. Even though - as I now knew - she could have afforded herself so much material comfort, so much that would have made her life that little bit gentler. But, oh no, always the stoic. Always the proper puritan who answered each one of her difficult daughter's entreaties with: 'I really do have enough, dear... I need so little... you must put yourself first, dear'.

And knowing the way her mind operated, I also understood the logic of her decision. Meg was right: she was the ultimate pragmatist... yet one with a deeply ethical streak. So though she might have felt compelled to accept that woman's money to pay for her children's education, there was no way that she was ever going to use a penny of the trust for her own needs. Because that would have undermined her complex sense of pride. Perhaps (as Meg had intimated) she did eventually forgive Sara Smythe... but once Charlie and I were no longer her dependents, she decided to act as if the trust no longer existed. Instead, she concealed it like buried treasure, to be discovered after her death. The last of the big bombshells to be landed on my doorstep in the days after her funeral.

Seven hundred and forty-nine thousand, six hundred and twelve dollars. It made no sense. No sense at all.

'Kate?'

I snapped back to the here and now. Mr Tougas was reaching over to his desk and retrieving a box of Kleenex. He put it on the coffee table, gesturing towards it. That's when I realized that my face was wet. I pulled a tissue from the box. I dabbed my eyes. I muttered, 'Sorry'.

'No need to be', Mr Tougas said. 'I'm sure it's all a bit of a shock'.

'I don't deserve it'.

He allowed himself a small laugh. 'Sure you do, Kate. You and Ethan. It'll make things a lot easier'.

'And Charlie?' I said.

'What about Charlie?'

'I was just wondering: what's his share in all this?'

'His share? As I explained earlier, he has no share. Your mother cut him out of the will. Didn't she tell you... ?'

'Oh, she told me that Charlie was not going to be inheriting anything. But she also said that there was virtually nothing in her estate'.

'I guess she wanted to surprise you'.

'She succeeded'.

'Anyway, your mother was very specific about the fact that the trust was yours, and yours alone'.

'Poor Charlie', I said.

Mr Tougas shrugged. 'You reap what you sow'.

'I guess that's true', I said and stood up. 'Is there anything else we need to discuss today?'

'Well, there are still a couple of small points about the probate. But if you'd rather wait until next week...'

'Yes, I would like to wait. I need time to...'

'You don't have to explain', he said. 'Give me a call whenever'.

I headed out to the street. I turned right and started walking north. I walked slowly, oblivious to my fellow pedestrians, to the traffic, to the din of the city. As if on auto-pilot, I made a reflexive right on 74th Street. I let myself back into my apartment, and began to act on the temporary escape plan I had been hatching in my head all the way uptown.

Picking up the phone I called Avis, and arranged to pick up a car that afternoon at their East 64th Street depot. Then I booked a room for that night at a hotel in Sarasota Springs. Powering up Ethan's computer, I sent an e-mail to Matt:

Ethan and I are going to be out-of-town until late Monday night. You can reach me on my cellphone at all times.

I paused for a moment, then quickly typed:

Once again, thank you for your kindness during the last awful week. It was much appreciated.

Then I wrote my name and hit the Send button.

At three that afternoon, I was standing outside the Allan-Stevenson School on East 78th Street. As Ethan emerged through the front door, he was a little bemused to see me standing there... with two small duffel bags parked by my feet.

'We're not going to the dinosaurs?' he asked, sounding disappointed.

'I have a better idea. A more fun idea'.

'What kind of fun?'

'Want to run away for the weekend?'

His eyes flickered with excitement. 'You bet'.

I handed him an envelope, addressed to his home room teacher, Mr Mitchell.

'Run on inside with this - it's a note to Mr Mitchell, telling him we're going to be far away from school until Tuesday'.

'How far?'

'Real far'.

'Wow'.

He grabbed the note and dashed back inside the school building, handing it to the receptionist at the front desk. An hour later, we were driving up the East Side Drive, heading west on the Cross Bronx Expressway, hitting the 287, crossing the Hudson just south of Tarrytown, then joining the 87 towards the depths of upstate New York.

'Where's Canada, Mommy?' Ethan asked me after I revealed our final destination.

'Canada's up above us'.

'Above us, like the North Pole where Santa lives?'

'That's right'.

'But we won't see Santa?'

'No. We'll see... uh, Canadians'.

'Oh', Ethan said, sounding rightfully bemused.

Why had I chosen Canada as a run-away destination? No real reason - except that it was the first place that came into my head when I suddenly decided to get out of Dodge with Ethan. Also, it was the first time I had crossed the border since 1976 - when I ran off for a pseudo-romantic weekend in Quebec City with a then-boyfriend named Brad Bingham (well, he did go to Amherst). If I remember correctly, Brad was the deputy editor of the Amherst literary magazine, and was something of a Thomas Pynchon fanatic who harbored dreams about running off to Mexico and writing some big abstract novel. In college, we all entertain such quixotic fantasies about a future-without-responsibilities. Until we are shoved into the workaday world, and we accept our destiny, and conform to the social norm. Last I heard, Brad was a big-deal attorney in Chicago. There was a picture of him in the Times when he represented some sleaze-ball multinational corporation in an anti-trust case that was being argued in front of the Supreme Court. He'd put on thirty pounds and lost most of his hair and looked so depressingly middle-aged. Like the rest of us.

But, hey, he introduced me to Quebec City, and he was pretty gracious when, a week or so later, I decided that we should just be pals. Thanks to him, I was now heading north to Canada with my son.

'Does Daddy know where we're going?' Ethan asked.

'I sent him a message'.

'He was going to bring me to a hockey game on Saturday'.

Oh God, I'd forgotten he'd mentioned this nighttime outing to me weeks ago (as the Saturday in question fell out of the usual two weekends a month which Ethan spent with his father). I reached over to the dashboard, and grabbed my cellphone.

'I could have you up for kidnapping', Matt said after I reached him at the office. His tone, thankfully, was ironic. Mine was instantly sheepish.

'It was a last-minute idea', I said. 'I'm really sorry. We can turn right around again if...'

'That's okay. I think Quebec City sounds great. You will have him back in time for school on Tuesday?'

'Absolutely'.

'And you told the school he'd be out on Monday?'

'Of course. I'm not that irresponsible'.

'No one's saying you're irresponsible, Kate'.

'That's your implication...'

'It isn't'.

'Fine, fine, fine. Look, I'm sorry if I screwed up your hockey game plans'.

'That's not the point...'

'Then what is the point, Matt?'

'You can never stop, can you?'

'I'm not trying to start anything'.

'All right, all right, you win. Happy now?'

'I'm not trying to win anything, Matt'.

'This conversation's closed'.

'Fine', I said, now appalled by the senseless stupidity of this exchange. Would I never get anything right? After a moment's silence, I asked, 'Do you want to speak to Ethan?'

'Please'.

I handed the phone to my son.

'Your dad', I said.

I listened in while Ethan spoke to Matt. He sounded a little tentative, a little shy - and certainly cowed by the argument he'd just overheard. I felt a horrible stab of guilt, and wondered if he'd end up hating us for fracturing his life; for squandering his stability at a premature age.

'Yeah, Dad... yeah, I'd like that... the circus would be great... Yeah, I'll be a good boy for Mommy... yeah, bye...'

He handed me the phone. We didn't speak for a long time. Finally he said, 'I'm hungry'.

We stopped at a McDonald's outside of New Paltz. Ethan sat quietly, eating his Chicken McNuggets and french fries, fingering the cheap plastic toy that accompanied his kiddie meal. I sipped a styrofoam cup of rancid coffee, looking at him anxiously, wishing I could somehow make everything fine for him... and knowing that that was impossible.

I touched his face.

'Ethan, darling...'

He suddenly jerked his head away, and started to cry.

'I want you to live with Daddy', he said between sobs.

Oh God...

I reached out for him, but he pulled away, his sobs escalating.

'I want my mommy and daddy to live together'.

His voice was now piercing - heartbreakingly so. An elderly couple at a nearby table glared at me as if I was the personification of everything that was wrong with contemporary womanhood. Ethan suddenly threw himself against me. I gathered him up in my arms, and rocked him until he calmed down.

When we finally got back on the road, Ethan promptly fell asleep. I stared ahead at the dark highway, trying to maintain my concentration, trying not to fall apart behind the wheel, my eyes clouding up, a low fog rolling in over the road, my headlights trying to pierce its cotton candy veil. I felt as if I was driving into a vacuum. A void to match my own.

When we reached the hotel I had booked in Sarasota Springs, Ethan was still conked out. So I carried him up to the room, got him into his pajamas, and tucked him into one of the room's two double beds. Then I sat in a bath for an hour, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Eventually I dragged myself out of the tub and ordered a Caesar salad and a half-bottle of red wine from room service. I picked at the romaine lettuce. I downed the Bordeaux. I attempted to read an Anne Tyler novel I'd thrown into my bag - but the words swam in front of me. I put down the book and stared out the window at cascading snow. As hard as I tried, my mind couldn't let go of one repetitive thought: I have fucked it all up.

The snow had stopped by the time I snapped awake. Morning dawned clear and cold - a promising day. I felt rested. Ethan seemed brighter, and excited about the trip north. He devoured a stack of pancakes. He asked all sorts of questions about the journey ahead. He wanted to know if we'd see bears in Canada. Or moose. Or wolves.

'Maybe a wolf, if we're lucky', I said.

'But I want to see a bear too'.

'I'll see if that can be arranged'.

It took nearly seven hours to reach Quebec City - but Ethan seemed to enjoy the ride. Especially as I had thrown a Game Boy into his bag - and was relieved to discover that he could play it in a moving car without getting sick. He read books. We chatted about a wide variety of topics (whether Godzilla really was a good monster who'd simply lost his way in life; which Power Ranger Ethan planned to emulate when he grew up). He loved crossing the border - and charmed the woman customs inspector at Canada Douanes by asking her where we could buy a wolf. He was fascinated by all the road signs in French. We bypassed Montreal and took Highway 40 north. It followed the St Lawrence - and Ethan was riveted by the sight of a major river that had become a solid chunk of ice. Night was falling. It was another two hours to Quebec City. Ethan slipped off to sleep, but woke when we pulled into the driveway of the Chateau Frontenac. The cold air jolted him awake immediately. Our room was poky, but it had a fantastic view over the city. Ethan stared out at the fairytale lights of Vieux Quebec.

'I want to go downstairs', Ethan said.

We threw our coats back on, and went out. A light snow was falling. The faux gas lamps of Old Quebec cast the cobbled streets in a spectral glow. The city's gingerbread architecture looked edible. Ethan held my hand, and was wide-eyed. Seeing his unalloyed pleasure lifted me for the first time in weeks.

'I want to live here', Ethan said.

I laughed. 'But you'd have to learn French'.

'I can learn French. And you and Daddy can learn French'.

I tried to fight off a wave of sadness. 'Let's go back to the room, Ethan. It's cold'.

Back upstairs, we ordered room service. After Ethan finished off le hot dog pommes frites (and I picked at a truly bland coq au vin), Ethan said, 'Next time we go away, Daddy will come with us'.

'Ethan, darling...'

'And then we can all go to DisneyWorld at Easter'.

'You and I are going to DisneyWorld, Ethan', I said.

'And Daddy will come too'.

I took a deep, steadying breath. I reached for Ethan's hand.

'Ethan, you know that Daddy now lives with Blair...'

'But he'll live with you again'.

'No, Ethan, he won't be living with me again'.

'Don't say that'.

'Daddy and I have both told you this before'.

'But it's not fair...'

'You're right. It's not fair But it's what's happened. We can't live together'.

'You can...'

'No, Ethan, we can't. We never will again. I know it's sad, but it doesn't mean...'

I didn't get to finish that sentence, as Ethan went running into the bathroom, slamming the door after him. Then I heard him sobbing. I opened the door. He was sitting on the top of the toilet seat, his face in his hands.

'Go away', he said.

'Ethan, let me try to explain...'

'Go away!'

I decided not to push the issue, so I returned to the bedroom, turned on the television, and aimlessly channel-surfed. My stomach was in chaos. I didn't know what to do or say to make the situation better. After two minutes I tiptoed back to the bathroom door and listened. His crying had subsided. I heard him lift up the toilet seat and pee. I heard him flush the john, then run some water. I heard him walking towards the door, so I dashed back to the armchair by the television. Ethan came out of the bathroom, his head bowed. He walked over to his bed and climbed in under the covers. I turned around to him and asked, 'Would you like to watch some cartoons?'

He nodded, so I flipped around stations until I found Cartoon Network. Only, of course, it was dubbed into French.

'Want me to change it?'

'No', he said quietly. 'It's funny'.

So we sat watching Tom and Jerry a la francaise. Ethan remained lying on his side, huddled under the covers. After around five minutes he said, 'I want a cuddle'.

Instantly I went over and lay beside him on top of the covers. I put my arms around his shoulders and drew him close to me.

'I'm sorry, Ethan. I'm sorry'.

But Ethan didn't reply. He just stared straight ahead at the cat-and-mouse fight on the screen. His silence said it all. Though we'd never given him false hopes about a possible reconciliation, an ongoing fear of mine was now confirmed. The fear that, ever since he had been aware of his parents' separation, he had been convincing himself it was merely a temporary situation; that, one fine morning, Daddy would move back in with Mommy, and Ethan's once-secure world would be restored to him. But now, the reality had finally hit. As I held him tighter in my arms, I couldn't help but think that, thanks to the combined efforts of both his parents, Ethan had just been given a premature introduction to one of life's fundamental truisms: when it comes to giving you a sense of security, people always fail you.

Ethan didn't bring the subject up again for the rest of the trip. We spent the next day exploring Vieux Quebec's back streets. We took a cab to the rural outskirts of town and went on a horse-driven sleigh ride through snowbound woodlands. Early that evening, we attended a children's puppet show in a tiny theater. It was Peter and the Wolf, in French (naturellement), but Ethan knew the story by heart (he had the CD at home), and delighted in being able to follow it in a foreign language. We ate dinner in a restaurant that featured a wandering accordionist, playing what I gathered were old Quebec favorites. The music was deeply resistible, but Ethan seemed to enjoy the novelty of it - especially when the accordionist approached our table, asked Ethan what French songs he knew, and then serenaded him with Frere Jacques.

All in all, it was a good day. Ethan never appeared glum or preoccupied (and, believe me, I was monitoring his moods carefully). He fell into bed that night tired, but reasonably happy. He kissed me goodnight and told me he wished we could stay another day in Quebec.

'So do I', I said, 'but Allan-Stevenson might object if I keep you out another day'.

'You could tell them I got sick'.

I laughed. 'My boss might also get a little grumpy with me if I didn't show up on Tuesday. But hey, Easter's not far off. And Easter means

'DisneyWorld!'

'You've got it. Now get some sleep'.

As soon as Ethan had conked out, I picked up the phone and called Meg.

'Where the hell are you?' she asked.

I told her.

'Quebec in the middle of January? You must be a masochist'.

'Hey, why should old habits die hard'.

She laughed. 'You sound a little better'.

'We had a good day. And since "good days" have been in short supply recently...'

'I hear you...'

'I also managed to see Mom's lawyer yesterday'.

'And?'

'Well, the trust didn't turn out to be depleted'.

'Really?'

'In fact...'

And then I told her the exact sum involved.

'You're kidding me', she said.

'I'm not'.

'Jesus Christ. You're certainly buying lunch the next time'.

'It's quite something, isn't it?'

'Quite something? It's unbelievable'.

'Yes. I guess it is'.

'I tell you, sweetheart - your mother was some operator'.

'Yes', I said quietly. 'I suppose she was'.

'Don't tell me you're unhappy about this windfall?'

'I'm just... I don't know... just bewildered. By everything'.

'I know. But don't be bewildered by this. It's good news'.

'Yes, I suppose it is... though I do feel kind of strange about Charlie...'

'Fuck him. You were the one who was there for your mom'.

'But he was the one who lost his father'.

'You did too'.

'But, unlike Charlie, I never knew my dad. And unlike Charlie, Mom never made me feel as if I had stood in the way of...'

'Hang on', Meg said. 'She really did love Charlie'.

'I'm sure. But did she ever like him?'

'I don't know'.

'Face fact: if Charlie hadn't come along, she would never have married Jack Malone. And her life may have been happier'.

'Don't count on that. Your mother did have a talent for martyrdom'.

'Tell me about it. All that money sitting there, and she still had to nickel-and-dime herself'.

'She never got over it, Kate. Never. It was the great tragedy of her life'.

Unlike Sara Smythe. It may have been her great tragedy too... but at least she came to terms with it. Or, at least, she learned how to live with it. My mom also 'lived with it', but it haunted her every move. I saw that now. Just as I also saw that I never really understood her. When did I ever see her courage in raising two children alone? When did I ever glimpse the mettle with which she coped with life? Never. She cut corners and wore twenty-year-old dresses and refused to recover her threadbare sofa and lived in a cramped apartment - all so, one day, I wouldn't have to repeat her story... so the second half of my life would be comfortable, secure, well-upholstered. But I was too wrapped up in my own griefs; my own sense of having been betrayed by men, by circumstances, by life. Unlike my mother - who stayed silent for four decades about the betrayal that fractured her life and sent it on a difficult trajectory. No doubt, she also wanted to scream: me, me, me, me, me. But she never would have dreamed of articulating such a self-centered complaint. She remained silently stoical. Not realizing that, in her own undemonstrative way, she was heroic.

'You okay, Kate?' Meg asked, registering my silence.

'I'm trying to be'.

'You'll be fine. I know it. And if you're not, at least you can now be a rich, miserable pain-in-the-ass'.

I laughed. And said, 'I'm going to bed'.

'Lunch next week?'

'Of course. And this time, I really am picking up the tab'.

Ethan and I both slept well. I was relieved to see that the threat of a snowstorm failed to materialize in the morning. We were on the road by nine a.m. Three hours later - just after we had crossed the border back into New York - Ethan turned to me and said, 'I want to spend tonight with my daddy'.

I bit my lip and said nothing, except: 'Whatever you want, big guy. Let's call him right now'.

I reached for my cellphone and rang Matt's office. His secretary put me through. We had a reasonably civilized conversation. Then I turned the phone over to Ethan.

'Daddy, can I come and stay with you tonight?'

They chatted for a few minutes, Ethan sounding really enthusiastic as they bantered away. Of course, I felt envy. Of course, I knew this was wrong - but when a child is shared between two parents, there is always this ongoing worry that your ex is showing him the better time, or relating to him more positively than you. No matter how you try to dodge it, a competitive climate develops between you and your ex. You've taken him to the circus? I'm bringing him to The Lion King on Broadway. You've bought him Nikes? I'm getting him his first pair of Timberlands. It's grim, this aggressive game of who's the better divorced parent? And totally unavoidable.

Ethan finished talking to Matt, and handed the phone back to me.

'You sure you don't mind letting him stay with us tonight?' Matt asked.

Yes, I minded. But I knew that, somehow, I had to stop minding. Otherwise I would be flagellating myself forever.

'It's fine', I said. 'Honestly'.

'Great', he said, sounding surprised. 'Thank you'.

We sped south. With a stop for an early dinner, we arrived in northern Manhattan just before eight. I called Matt again and told him to expect us in around twenty minutes. As I'd had Ethan's school clothes cleaned at the Chateau Frontenac (and his bookbag was also in the trunk of the car), there was no need to stop by our apartment. Matt was waiting outside his building on West 20th Street. As soon as I'd stopped the car, Ethan was out the door and in his father's arms. I went around to the trunk. I opened the duffel bag containing Ethan's clothes. I transferred some toilet supplies and a clean set of underwear into his school bag. Then I lifted out the cleaned uniform (still wrapped in the hotel's dry-cleaning cellophane) and handed it to Matt. Ethan took his school bag.

'He's got a change of socks and jockeys in his bag, along with his toothbrush. And here's his school uniform'.

'You know, he does have a spare set of all that stuff here', Matt said.

'I hadn't thought of that...'

'Doesn't matter', he said, then nudged Ethan forward. 'Thank your mom for a great weekend'.

I bent down. Ethan planted a kiss on my right cheek. 'Thanks, Mom', he said simply.

I stood back up.

'Well...' Matt said.

'Well...' I said, thinking how awkward we now were with each other. You meet. You couple. You get to know each other very, very intimately. You make a baby together. Then it all goes wrong. So wrong that it gets reduced to terse exchanges, terse handshakes, a child with divided loyalties.

Matt proffered his hand. I took it.

'That was a dumb argument the other day', I said.

'Very dumb'.

'It's always been something of a specialty of ours, dumb arguments'.

'Yes', he said with a light laugh. 'We definitely have a talent for fighting. But... it happens, I guess'.

'Yes', I said quietly. 'It happens'.

A slight smile between us, then the handshake ended. I bent down and kissed Ethan, saying, 'See you tomorrow after school, darling. I'll be home from the office around seven'.

Ethan nodded, then turned with his dad and entered the building. I got the car back to Avis. Then I went home. The silence of the empty apartment was huge. But I reminded myself that it was just for tonight.

The next morning, I returned to the office. I had such a backlog of work that I had lunch sent in. But I did set aside a few minutes to call Peter Tougas.

'You feeling better, Kate?' he asked.

'A bit'.

'Like I said last week, it's going to take a lot of time'.

'Doesn't everything?'

'You might have a point there. So... are we ready to proceed with the probate?'

'Absolutely. But I first need to ask a question: as the sole beneficiary of the trust, I am free to do whatever I like with the money?'

'Yes', he said, sounding wary. 'As I mentioned the other day, there were no stipulations in the will about the use of the funds'.

'Good. Because I've decided that my brother should be cut back in'.

'What?' Mr Tougas said, sounding genuinely shocked.

'I want Charlie to have half the trust'.

'Hang on a minute, Kate...'

'It's what... ? Nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand? Give him three seventy-five'.

'You don't have to do this'.

'I am aware of that'.

'At least take a couple of days to reflect...'

'I have taken a couple of days to reflect on it'.

'Take a couple more...'

'No. I've made my mind up. I want him to get half the trust'.

'Kate... you know how he treated your mother'.

'You're right. I do. But he still gets half the trust'.

'On what grounds?'

I didn't say. Even though I now knew the grounds, the reasons. My mother - the silent master strategist - had checkmated me. She'd set it all up: first getting Sara to tell me her story, then letting her lawyer floor me with the news about the trust. Nothing said, everything implied. Even though the implication was now clear as hell: when it comes to forgiveness, language may be important... but gesture is everything. Because gesture begets another gesture. Just as forgiving another allows you to forgive yourself. Sara and my mother didn't speak for decades, but the gestures were made, the forgiveness rendered. Now, in death, my mother was doing what she always did. She was asking me a question: can you do the same with your brother? Even though you know he's so wrong?

'Please, just give me one reason...' Mr Tougas said.

'Because it's what she would have wanted'.

Long silence.

'All right, Kate', Mr Tougas said. 'I'll prepare the necessary paperwork. And would you like me to phone Charlie and break the news?'

'Please'.

'What should I tell him?' he asked me.

'Tell him to call me'.

I hung up the phone. I went back to work. I left the office around six thirty. En route home, I made a fast stop at F.A.O. Schwarz, picking up a motorized Lego robot. Yes, I knew it was a useless piece of plastic junk. But Ethan had seen it advertised on television, and had been dropping hints for weeks that he wanted one. I had it gift-wrapped. Then I caught a cab north, arriving home just after seven fifteen. Clare the nanny was tidying up the kitchen. She gave me a hug (she hadn't seen me since the funeral), and asked how I was doing.

'I'm coping', I said. 'How's our guy?'

'In his room, waging intergalactic war on his computer'.

I poked my head into his room. He turned around from his computer screen. He caught sight of the F.A.O. Schwarz bag, and his face lit up.

'Can I see? Can I see?' he asked.

'Don't I get a "hello"?'

He ran over and gave me a fast kiss on the cheek. 'Hello. Can I see?'

I handed him the bag. 'Wow!' he said when he saw that it was the Lego he so craved. 'You knew'.

Yeah. Maybe for a change, I did.

He sat down on the floor and began to open the box, looking up at me to ask: 'Will you come put it together for me?'

'Of course... after one phone call'.

'Mom...' he said, sounding disappointed.

'Just one call, then I'm yours'.

I walked into the bedroom. I lifted the receiver. I took a deep breath. This was a call I had been postponing for days; a call I knew I had to make. I phoned Information. I got the number for a Smythe, S. on West 77th Street. I dialed it. She answered. I said, 'Hi. It's me. Kate'.

'Oh, hello', she said, sounding surprised. 'How very nice to hear from you'.

Especially as, just a few days ago, I told you we'd never speak again.

'Yes, well, uh...' I was really being articulate.

'Is something the matter?'

'No. Not at all. I was just wondering...'

'Yes?'

'Well...'

Oh, go on. Spit it out.

'Well', I said. 'I was thinking of taking Ethan to the Children's Zoo on Saturday. You know the Children's Zoo, don't you?'

'Yes. I do'.

'Anyway, we'll be going there around eleven. If you wanted to meet us there... and, maybe, have lunch with us afterwards... ?'

A small pause.

'Yes', she said. 'I would like that very much'.

'Good', I said. 'We'll see you Saturday'.

I put down the phone. I was about to pick it up again to call Meg, but Ethan shouted, 'Mom, you've got to help me'.

I walked into his room. There, scattered across the floor, was a mosaic of useless plastic pieces. Ethan had the assembly instructions in his hand.

'Come on', he said. 'Put it together'.

I groaned and sat down beside him. I groaned again when I glanced at the instructions. They were spread across ten pages and were written in six languages. You needed a degree from MIT to decipher them.

'Ethan, this is really hard'.

'You'll do it', he said.

'Don't be so sure of that'.

'Come on. Try'.

Try. Ha. What do you think I do? All the damn time.

'Mom...' he said, trying to get me to focus on the matter at hand.

I looked up at him - and suddenly saw the resentful, pimply adolescent who would give me the cold shoulder while still desperately needing me. I saw the gangly, awkward college kid, making one mistake after another. I saw the young man, renting his first apartment in New York or Boston or Chicago or wherever - so sure of himself on the surface, yet so riddled with doubt like everyone else. And I wondered: when would it hit him? When would he realize that this is all such a deeply flawed business? That we never get it right? Most of us proceed forward with good intentions. We try our best. Yet so often we fail ourselves and others. What else can we do but try again? It's the only option open to us. Trying is the way we get through the day.

Ethan reached for the biggest piece of plastic on the floor. He held it out to me.

'Please. Make it work'.

'I don't know how to make it work, Ethan. I don't know how to make anything work'.

'You can try'.

I opened my hand. He handed me the lump of plastic. I thought: I don't want to fail you... but I might.

Then I looked up into his expectant eyes.

'Okay', I said. 'I'll try'.

Read on for a preview of Douglas Kennedy's compelling new novel State of the Union...

'State of the Union has the feel of a handgun primed for Russian roulette. The climax, when past and future collide, is explosive'.

The Times

'A mesmerizing page-turner about the breakdown of three generations of an ail-American family'

Sunday Express

'Switching between wry humour and mesmerizing suspense, Douglas Kennedy's novel is perceptive and hugely enjoyable'.

Mail on Sunday

'Kennedy has a thriller writer's ability to keep you turning the pages, while absorbing you in the persuasive detail of one woman's emotional life. Popular fiction at its best'.

Marie Claire

One

After he was arrested, my father became famous.

It was 1966 - and Dad (or John Winthrop Latham, as he was known to everyone except his only child) was the first professor at the University of Vermont to speak out against the war in Vietnam. That spring, he headed a campus-wide protest that resulted in a sit-down demonstration outside the Administration Building. My dad led three hundred students as they peacefully blocked the entrance for thirty-six hours, bringing university executive business to a standstill. The police and National Guard were finally called. The protestors refused to move, and Dad was shown on national television being hauled off to jail.

It was big news at the time. Dad had instigated one of the first major exercises in student civil disobedience against the war and the image of this lone, venerable Yankee in a tweed jacket and a button-down Oxford blue shirt, being lifted off the ground by a couple of Vermont state troopers, made it on to newscasts around the country.

'Your dad's so cool!' everybody told me at high school the morning after his arrest. Two years later, when I started my freshman year at the University of Vermont, even mentioning that I was Professor Latham's daughter provoked the same response.

'Your dad's so cool!' And I'd nod and smile tightly, and say, 'Yeah, he's the best'.

Don't get me wrong, I adore my father. Always have, always will. But when you're eighteen - as I was in '69 - and you're desperately trying to establish just the smallest sort of identity for yourself, and your dad has turned into the Tom Paine of both your home town and your college, you can easily find yourself dwarfed by his lanky, virtuous shadow.

I could have escaped his high moral profile by transferring to another school. Instead, in the middle of my sophomore year, I did the next best thing: I fell in love.

Dan Buchan was nothing like my father. Whereas Dad had the heavy-duty WASP credentials - Choate, Princeton, then Harvard for his doctorate - Dan was from a nowhere town in upstate New York called Glens Falls. His father was a maintenance man in the local school system, his late mother had run a little manicure shop in town and Dan was the first member of his family to go to college at all, let alone medical school.

He was also one shy guy. He never dominated a conversation, never imposed himself on a situation. But he was a great listener - always far more interested in what you had to say. I liked this. And I found his gentle reticence to be curiously attractive. He was serious - and unlike everyone else I met at college back then, he knew exactly where he was going. On our second date he told me over a beer or two that he really didn't want to get into some big ambitious field like neurosurgery. And there was no way that he was going to 'pull a major cop out' and choose a big bucks speciality like dermatology. No, he had his sights set on Family Medicine.

'I want to be a small country doctor, nothing more', he said.

First year med students worked thirteen-hour days, and Dan studied non-stop. The contrast between us couldn't have been more marked. I was an English major, thinking about teaching school when I graduated. But it was the early seventies, and unless you were going through the grind of med or law school, the last thing anyone had on their mind was 'the future'.

Dan was twenty-four when I met him, but the five-year age gap wasn't huge. From the outset, I liked the fact that he seemed far more focused and adult than any of the guys I had been seeing before him.

Not that I knew that much about men. There had been a high-school boyfriend named Jared - who was bookish and kind of arty and totally adored me, until he got into the University of Chicago, and it was clear that neither of us wanted to sustain a long distance thing. Then, during my first semester at college, I had my one short flirtation with freakdom when I started seeing Charlie. Like Jared, he was very sweet, very well read, a good talker, and 'creative' (which, for Charlie, meant writing a lot of what was - even to my impressionable eighteen-year-old eyes - really turgid poetry). He was heavily into dope - one of those guys who was usually smoking a joint with their breakfast coffee. For awhile, this didn't bother me - even though I was never really into his scene. Still, in retrospect, I needed this brief descent into bacchanalia. It was '69 - and bacchanalia was in. But after three weeks of putting up with the mattress on the floor of the crash pad where Charlie lived - and his increasingly obtuse, stoned monologues from deepest Spacey Outer - there was an evening when I came over to find him sitting around with three friends, passing around a humungous joint while blaring The Grateful Dead on the hi-fi.

'Hey...' he said to me, then lapsed into silence. When I asked him over the din of the music if he wanted to head out to a movie, he just said 'Hey' again, though he kept nodding his head sagely, as if he had just revealed to me some great deep karmic secret about life's hidden mysteries.

I didn't hang around - but instead retreated back to campus and ended up nursing a beer by myself in the Union, while tearing into a pack of Viceroy cigarettes. Somewhere during the third cigarette, Margy showed up. She was my best friend - a thin, reedy Manhattan smartass with a big shock of black curly hair. She'd been raised on Central Park West and went to the right school (Nightingale Bamford), and was super-smart. But, by her own admission, she had 'fucked up so badly when it came to opening a book' that she ended up at a state university in Vermont. 'And I'm not even into skiing'.

'You looked pissed off', she said, sitting down, then tapping a Viceroy out of my pack and lighting it up with the book of matches on the table. 'Fun night with Charlie?'

I shrugged.

'The usual freak show over at that commune of his?' she asked.

'Uh-huh'.

'Well, I guess the fact he's cute makes up for...' She stopped herself in mid-phrase, taking a deep pull off her cigarette.

'Go on', I said, 'finish the sentence'.

Another long, thoughtful drag on her cigarette.

'The guy is high every moment of the day. Which kind of doesn't do much good for his use of words with more than one syllable, does it?'

I found myself laughing because in true New York style Margy had cut right through the crap. She was also ruthlessly straight about what she saw as her own limitations... and why, three months into our freshman year, she was still without a boyfriend.

'All the guys here are either ski bums - which, in my Thesaurus, is a synonym for Blah... or they're the sort of dope heads who have turned their brains into Swiss cheese'.

'Hey, it's not for life', I said defensively.

'I'm not talking about your Mr Personality, hon. I'm just making a general observation'.

'You think he'd be devastated if I dumped him?'

'Oh, please. I think he'd take three hits off that stupid bong of his, and get over it before he exhaled the second time'.

It still took me another couple of weeks to break it off. I hate displeasing people and I always want to be liked. This is something that my mother, Dorothy, used to chide me about - because also being a New Yorker (and being my mom), she was similarly no-nonsense when it came to telling me what she thought.

'You know, you don't always have to be Little Miss Popularity', she once said when I was a junior in high school, and complained about not winning a place on the Student Council. 'And not fitting in with the cheerleading crowd seems cool to me. Because it's really okay to be smart'.

'A B-average isn't smart', I said. 'It's mediocre'.

'I had a B-average in high school', Mom said. 'And I thought that was pretty good. And, like you, I only had a couple of friends, and didn't make the cheerleading squad'.

'Mom, they didn't have cheerleaders at your school'.

'All right, so I didn't make the chess team. My point is: the popular girls in high school are usually the least interesting ones... and they always end up marrying orthodontists. And it's not like either your father or I think you're inadequate. On the contrary, you're our star'.

'I know that', I lied. Because I didn't feel like a star. My dad was a star - the great craggy radical hero - and my mom could tell stories about hanging out with De Kooning and Johns and Rauschenberg and Pollock and all those other New York school bigwigs after the war.

She'd exhibited in Paris, and still spoke French, and taught part time in the university art department, and just seemed so damn accomplished and sure of herself. Whereas I really didn't have any talent, let alone the sort of passion that drove my parents through life.

'Will you give yourself a break?' my mother would say. 'You haven't even begun to live, let alone find out what you're good at'.

And then she'd hurry off for a meeting of Vermont Artists Against the War, of which she was, naturally, the spokesperson.

That was the thing about my mom - she was always busy. And she certainly wasn't the type to share casserole recipes and bake Girl Scout cookies and sew costumes for Christmas pageants. In fact, Mom was the worst cook of all time. She really couldn't care less if the spaghetti came out of the pot half-stiff, or if the breakfast oatmeal was a mess of hardened lumps. And when it came to house-work... well, put it this way, from the age of thirteen onwards, I decided it was easier to do it myself. I changed the sheets on all the beds, did everyone's laundry, and ordered the weekly groceries. I didn't mind coordinating everything. It gave me a sense of responsibility. And anyway, I enjoyed being organized.

'You really like to play house, don't you?' Mom once said when I popped over from college to clean the kitchen.

'Hey, be grateful someone around here does'.

Still, my parents never set curfews, never told me what I couldn't wear, never made me tidy my room. But perhaps they didn't have to. I never stayed out all that late, I never did the flower child clothes thing (I preferred short skirts), and I was one hell of a lot tidier than they were.

Even when I started smoking cigarettes at seventeen, they didn't raise hell.

'I read an article in The Atlantic saying they might cause cancer', my mother said when she found me sneaking a butt on the back porch of our house. 'But they're your lungs, kiddo'.

My friends envied me such non-controlling parents. They dug their radical politics and the fact that our New England red clapboard house was filled with my mom's weird abstract paintings. But the price I paid for such freedom was my mom's non-stop sarcasm.

'Prince Not So Bright', she said the day after my parents met Charlie.

'I'm sure it's just a passing thing', my dad said.

'I hope so'.

'Everyone needs at least one goof-ball romance', he said, giving Mom an amused smile.

'De Kooning was no goof-ball'.

'He was perpetually vague'.

'It wasn't a romance. It was just a two-week thing...'

'Hey, you know I am in the room', I said, not amazed how they had somehow managed to blank me out, but just a little astonished to learn that Mom had once been Willem de Kooning's lover.

'We are aware of that, Hannah', my mom said calmly. 'It's just that, for around a minute, the conversation turned away from you'.

Ouch. That was classic Mom. My dad winked at me, as if to say, 'You know she doesn't mean it'. But the thing was, she really did. And being a Good Girl, I didn't storm out in adolescent rage. I just took it on the chin - per usual.

When it came to encouraging my independence Mom urged me to attend college away from Burlington - and gave me a hard time for being a real little homebody when I decided to go to the University of Vermont. She insisted that I live in a dorm on campus. 'It's about time you were ejected from the nest', she said.

One of the things Margy and I shared was a confused background - WASPy dads and difficult Jewish moms who seemed to always find us wanting.

'At least your mom gets off her tukkus and does the art thing', said Margy. 'For my mom, getting a manicure is a major personal achievement'.

'You ever worry you're not really good at anything?' I suddenly said.

'Like only all the time. I mean, my mom keeps reminding me how I was groomed for Vassar and ended up in Vermont. And I know that the thing I do best is bum cigarettes and dress like Janis Joplin... so I'm not exactly Little Miss Bursting With Confidence. But what has you soul searching?'

'Sometimes I think my parents look on me as some separate self-governing state... and a massive disappointment'.

'They tell you this?'

'Not directly. But I know I'm not their idea of a success story'.

'Hey, you're eighteen. You're supposed to be a fuck-up... not that I'm calling you that'.

'I've got to get focused'.

Margy coughed out a lung full of smoke.

'Oh, please', she said.

But I was determined to get my act together - to win my parents' interest and show them that I was a serious person. So, for starters, I began to get serious as a student. I stayed in the library most nights until ten, and did a lot of extra reading - especially for a course called Landmarks of Nineteenth Century Fiction. We were reading Dickens and Thackeray and Hawthorne and Melville and even George Eliot. But of all the assigned books in that first semester course, the one that really grabbed me was Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

'But it's so goddamn depressing', Margy said.

'Isn't that the point?' I said. 'Anyway, the reason it's depressing is because it's so real'.

'You call all that romantic stupidity she gets into real? I mean, she's kind of a schnook, isn't she? Marrying that dull-ass guy, moving to a dull-ass town, then throwing herself at that smarmy soldier, who just sees her as a mattress, nothing more'.

'Sounds pretty real to me. Anyway, the whole point of the novel is how someone uses romance as a way of escaping from the boredom of her life'.

'So what else is new?' she said.

My dad, on the other hand, seemed interested in my take on the book. We were having one of our very occasional lunches off-campus (as much as I adored him, I didn't want to be seen eating with my father at the Union), slurping clam chowder at a little diner near the university. I told him how much I loved the book, and how I thought Emma Bovary was 'a real victim of society'.

'In what way?' he asked.

'Well, the way she lets herself get trapped in a life she doesn't want, and how she thinks falling in love with someone else will solve her problems'.

He smiled at me and said, 'That's very good. Spot on'.

'What I don't get is why she had to choose suicide as a way out; why she just didn't run away to Paris or something'.

'But you're seeing Emma from the perspective of an American woman in the late 1960s, not as someone trapped by the conventions of her time. You've read The Scarlet Letter, right?'

I nodded.

'Well, nowadays we might wonder why Hester Prynne put up with walking around Boston with a big letter A on her chest, and lived with constant threats from the Puritan elders about taking her child away. We could ask: why she didn't just grab her daughter and flee elsewhere? But in her mind, the question would have been: where can I go? To her, there was no escape from her punishment - which she almost considered to be her destiny. It's the same thing with Emma. She knows if she flees to Paris, she'll end up, at best, working as a seamstress or in some other depressing petit bourgeois job - because nineteenth-century society was very unforgiving about a married woman who'd run away from her responsibilities'.

'Does this lecture last long?' I asked, laughing. 'Because I've got a class at two'.

'I'm just getting to the point', Dad said with a smile. 'And the point is, personal happiness didn't count for anything. Flaubert was the first great novelist to understand that we all have to grapple with the prison which we create for ourselves'.

'Even you, Dad?' I asked, surprised to hear him make this admission. He smiled another of his rueful smiles and stared down into his bowl of chowder.

'Everyone gets bored from time to time', he said. Then he changed the subject.

It wasn't the first time my father had implied that things weren't exactly perfect with my mom. I knew they fought. My mom was Brooklyn Loud, and tended to fly off the handle when something pissed her off. My dad - true to his Boston roots - hated public confrontation (unless it involved adoring crowds and the threat of arrest). So as soon as Mom was in one of her flipped-out moods, he tended to run for cover.

When I was younger, these fights disturbed me. But, as I got older, I began to understand that my parents fundamentally got along - that theirs was a weirdly volatile relationship which just somehow worked, perhaps because they were such fantastic polar opposites. And though I probably would have liked them around more as I was growing up, one thing I did learn from their sometimes stormy, independent-minded marriage was that two people didn't have to crowd each other to make a relationship work. But when Dad hinted at a certain level of domestic boredom I realized something else: you never know what's going on with two people... you can only speculate.

Just as you can only speculate about why a woman like Emma Bovary so believed that love would be the answer to all her problems.

'Because the vast majority of women are idiots, that's why', my mother said when I made the mistake of asking her opinion about Flaubert's novel. 'And do you know why they're idiots? Because they put their entire faith in a man. Wrong move. Got that? Always'.

'I'm not stupid, Mom', I said.

'We'll see about that'.

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW

A Special Relationship

Douglas Kennedy

Sally Goodchild, a thirty-seven-year-old American journalist, suddenly finds herself pregnant and married to an English foreign correspondent, Tony Hobbs, whom she met while they were both on assignment in Cairo.

From the outset Sally's relationship with both Tony and London is an uneasy one - as she finds her husband and his city to be far more foreign than imagined. But her problems soon turn to nightmares when she discovers that everything can be taken down and used against you.

'I cannot remember a more compulsive book'

Sarah Sands, Daily Telegraph

'Kennedy knows how to keep the pages turning... A pacy, absorbing and intelligent story'

Elizabeth Buchan, Sunday Times

'Excellent... The pace is thriller-like, so cancel all engagements for the duration'

Good Housekeeping

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW

State of the Union

Douglas Kennedy

America in the Sixties was an era of radical upheaval - of civil rights protests and anti-war marches; of sexual liberation and hallucinogenic drugs. More tellingly, it was a time when you weren't supposed to trust anyone over the age of thirty; when, if you were young, you rebelled against your parents and their conservative values. But not Hannah Buchan.

Hannah is a great disappointment to her famous radical father and painter mother. Instead of mounting the barricades and embracing this age of profound social change, she wants nothing more than to marry her doctor boyfriend and raise a family in a small town.

Hannah gets her wish. But once installed as the doctor's wife in a nowhere corner of Maine, boredom sets in... until an unforeseen moment of personal rebellion changes everything.

For decades, this one transgression in an otherwise faultless life remains buried. But then, in the charged atmosphere of America after 9/11, her secret comes out and her life goes into freefall.

The story is sit-up-until-3am readable, the wide-ranging cast of highly individual characters is beautifully handled'

Sunday Times

'Kennedy is a complete genius when it comes to understanding the minds of stylish but troubled women. What's more, he does so enthrallingly and movingly'

Daily Mirror

AVAILABLE IN HUTCHINSON

The Woman in the Fifth

Douglas Kennedy

Harry Ricks is a man who has lost everything. A romantic mistake at the small American college where he used to teach has cost him his job, his marriage and his relationship with his only child. And when the ensuing scandal threatens to completely destroy him, he votes with his feet and flees... to Paris.

He arrives in the French capital in the bleak midwinter, where a series of accidental encounters lands him in a grubby room in a grubby quarter, and a job as a nightwatchman for a sinister operation.

Just when Harry begins to think that he has hit rock bottom, romance enters his life. Her name is Margit - an elegant, cultivated Hungarian emigre, long resident in Paris - widowed and, like Harry, alone.

But though Harry is soon smitten with her, Margit keeps her distance. She will only see him at her apartment in the fifth arrondissement for a few hours twice a week, and remains guarded about her work, her past, her life.

However, Harry's frustrations with her reticence are soon overshadowed by an ever-growing preoccupation that a dark force is at work in his life - as punishment begins to be meted out to anyone who has recently done him wrong. Before he knows it, he finds himself of increasing interest to the police and waking up in a nightmare from which there is no easy escape.

Set in a shadowy, sinister Paris, where nothing is exactly as it seems, The Woman in the Fifth is a novel that is guaranteed to keep you turning the pages well into the night. This eerie and unsettling tale of exile and revenge - and the murky frontier between the imagined and the terrifyingly real - is genuinely haunting. And it confirms Douglas Kennedy's reputation as a true master of narrative fiction.